Cisco Workgroup Bridges
A workgroup bridge (WGB) is an access point mode that
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provides wireless connectivity to wired clients connected on its Ethernet port
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connects a wired network to an existing wireless infrastructure through a single wireless segment, and
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learns the MAC addresses of its wired clients and reports them to the wireless LAN controller (WLC) using IAPP messaging.
The WGB establishes a single wireless connection to the root access point (AP). The root AP treats the WGB as a wireless client, allowing the wired devices behind the WGB to access the wireless network seamlessly. Suppose you have a group of wired devices in a conference room with no Ethernet drop available. You can connect these devices to a WGB, which allows them to communicate over the enterprise wireless network as if they were wireless clients.
These features are supported for use with WGB:
|
Feature |
Cisco Wave 1 APs |
Cisco Wave 2 |
|---|---|---|
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802.11r |
Supported |
Supported |
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QOS |
Supported |
Supported |
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UWGB mode |
Supported |
Supported on Wave 2 APs |
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IGMP Snooping or Multicast |
Supported |
Supported |
|
802.11w |
Supported |
Supported |
|
PI support (without SNMP) |
Supported |
Not supported |
|
IPv6 |
Supported |
Supported |
|
VLAN |
Supported |
Supported |
|
802.11i (WPAv2) |
Supported |
Supported |
|
Broadcast tagging/replicate |
Supported |
Supported |
|
Unified VLAN client |
Implicitly supported (No CLI required) |
Supported |
|
WGB client |
Supported |
Supported |
|
802.1x – PEAP, EAP-FAST, EAP-TLS |
Supported |
Supported |
|
NTP |
Supported |
Supported |
|
Wired client support on all LAN ports |
Supported in Wired-0 and Wired-1 interfaces |
Supported in all Wired-0, 1 and LAN ports 1, 2, and 3 |
This table shows the supported and unsupported authentication and switching modes for Cisco APs when connecting to a WGB.
|
Access Points |
Requirements |
|---|---|
|
Cisco Aironet 2700, 3700, and 1572 Series |
Requires autonomous image. |
|
Cisco Aironet 2800, 3800, 4800, 1562, and Cisco Catalyst 9105, 9115, IW6300 and ESW6300 Series |
CAPWAP image starting from Cisco AireOS 8.8 release. |
Restrictions for WGB
These are the restrictions for WGB:
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MAC filtering is not supported for wired clients.
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Idle timeout is not supported for both WGB and wired clients.
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Session timeout is not applicable for wired clients.
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Web authentication is not supported.
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WGB supports only up to 20 clients.
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If you want to use a chain of certificates, copy all the CA certificates to a file and install it under a trust point on the WGB, else server certificate validation may fail.
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Wired clients connected to the WGB are not authenticated for security. Instead, the WGB is authenticated against the access point to which it associates. Therefore, we recommend that you physically secure the wired side of the WGB.
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Wired clients connected to a WGB inherit the WGB's QoS and AAA override attributes.
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To enable the WGB to communicate with the root AP, create a WLAN and make sure that Aironet IE is enabled under the Advanced settings.
Configure a WGB on a WLAN (CLI)
Before you begin
Ensure WLAN security (such as authentication and encryption) is already configured.Procedure
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Step 1 |
Enter global configuration mode. Example:
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Step 2 |
Enter WLAN configuration submode. Example:
The profile-name is the profile name of the configured WLAN. |
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Step 3 |
Configure the Cisco Client Extensions option and sets the support of Aironet IE on the WLAN. Example:
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Step 4 |
Exit the WLAN configuration submode. Example:
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Step 5 |
Configure WLAN policy profile and enters the wireless policy configuration mode. Example:
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Step 6 |
Add a description for the policy profile. Example:
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Step 7 |
Assign the profile policy to the VLAN. Example:
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Step 8 |
Configure WGB VLAN client support. Example:
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Step 9 |
Configure WGB broadcast tagging on a WLAN. Example:
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Step 10 |
Restart the policy profile. Example:
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Step 11 |
Exit the wireless policy configuration mode. Example:
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Step 12 |
Configure policy tag and enters policy tag configuration mode. Example:
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Step 13 |
Map a policy profile to a WLAN profile. Example:
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Step 14 |
Exit policy tag configuration mode, and returns to privileged EXEC mode. Example:
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Verify WGB status on the controller
Use these commands to verify the status of a WGB.
To display the wireless-specific configuration of active clients, use this command:
Device# show wireless client summary
To display the WGBs on your network, use this command:
Device# show wireless wgb summary
To display the details of wired clients that are connected to a particular WGB, use this command:
Device# show wireless wgb mac-address 00:0d:ed:dd:25:82 detail
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