DellPowerConnect W- Series ArubaOS 6.2 | User Guide VirtualAPs |315
Chapte r 20

Virtual APs

APs advertise WLANs to wi relessclients by sending out beacons and probe responses that contain the WLAN’s
SSID and supportedauthenticat ion and data rates.When a wireless client associates to an AP, it sends traffic to the
AP’s Basic Service Set Identifier (BSSID) which is usuallythe AP’s MAC address.
In the Dellnetwo rk,an AP uses a unique BSSID for each WLAN. Thus a physical AP can support multipleWLANs.
The WLAN configuration applied to a BSSID on an AP i s calleda
virtual AP.
You can configureand apply multiple
virtualA Ps to anA P groupor to an individual AP by definingone or more virtual AP profiles.
This chapter describes the following topics:
l"ConfiguringVirtual AP Profiles" on page 315
l"Configuringa Vi rtualAP " on page 316
l"Configuringa High-Throughput Virtual AP" on page 340

Configuring Virtual AP Pro files

You canco nfigurevirtual AP profiles to provide differentnetwork access or services to users on the same physical
network.For example, you can configurea WLAN to provide access to guest users and anotherWLAN to provide
access to employee users through the same APs. You can also configure a WLAN that offers open authentication
and Captive Portal access with data rates of 1 and 2 Mbps and another WLAN that requires WPA authentication
with data rates ofup to 11 Mbps. You can applybot hvirtual AP configurations to the same AP or an AP group.
You can applythe same virtual AP profiles to one or more AP groups.Fo rexample, there are users in both
Edmonton and Toronto that access the same “Corpnet” WLAN. Note that if your WLAN requires authentication
to an externalserver, you may want t o have users who associate with the AP s in Toronto authenticate with their
locals ervers.In t his case, you can configure a slightly different AAA profiles; one that references authentication
serversi n the Edmonton and the other that referencesservers in Toronto (see to Table 85).
WLAN Profiles “default” AP Group “Toronto” AP Group
Virtual AP “Corpnet-E” “Corpnet-T”
SSID “Corpnet” “Corpnet”
AAA “E-Servers” “T-Servers”
Table85 :
ApplyingWLAN Profiles to AP Groups
Whenyou assi gna profile to an individual AP, the values in the profile override the profile assignedt o the AP group
to which the AP belongs.The exception is the virtual AP profile.You can apply multiplevirtual AP profiles to
individual APs, as wellas to A P groups.
You can excludeone or more virtual AP profiles from an individual AP. This prevents a virtual AP, defined at the AP
grouplevel, from being applied to a specific AP. For example, you can apply the virtual AP profile that corresponds