Brief Introduction
A WDS link connects a client AP and a host AP such that the client AP does not require a wired connection. The host must have a wired connection to the LAN. Client links from one or more APs may be connected to the host, and the host may also have client links. The configuration for WDS is performed on the client AP only, no WDS configuration is performed on the host AP.
If you aren’t using XMS-C, see this article for instructions on how to configure WDS directly via SSH.
Preparation Tasks
Before configuring the WDS link itself, we need to select which radio’s on the AP’s will be used for the WDS link. Once selected, we need to ensure that each radio to be used for WDS is on the same channel. You can do this in XMS-Cloud by drilling into each AP, and editing the radio settings.
Configuration Tasks
All configuration task for this guide will be completed using CLI commands from XMS-Cloud. To build the WDS link, we need an SSID to use for the connection. You could create that using a profile, but that would mean having a different profile for WDS AP’s. So let’s instead create the SSID using the XMS-Cloud CLI. Enter this script on both the host and the client AP. Ensure encryption is WPA2.
Cloud CLI Input
ssid add SSID-NAME
encryption wpa2 unique-settings
passphrase ********
psk on
enable
top
save
Expected Output
Note: New SSID is created disabled.
Enable after configuration.
SSID SSID-NAME authentication changed to 802-1x
Cannot enable both EAP and PSK
SSID SSID-NAME WPA2 EAP support changed to off
Saving configuration: OK
With the SSID created, we can now go ahead and build the WDS link.
We need to know the base Radio MAC address on the host AP to build the WDS link. So, we can find that by running the following command on the host AP.
Cloud CLI Input
show wds
Expected Output
<Host and Client Tables>
WDS Configuration : unlocked
Host Link Stations: disallowed
Roaming Threshold : 6dB
Roaming Avg Weight: 50
This Array Address: 48:c0:93:63:0e:00
Now that we have the host base Radio MAC address, lets create the WDS link on the client AP. Included in this command is the name of the SSID we created above, the MAC address of the Host AP which we collected in the step above and which radio to use for the connection. To identify the radio we use either Iap1 (radio 1) or Iap2 (radio 2). The line starting with ‘client-link’ finishes with ‘iap2 on’ – so all that content lives on a single line in the script despite the text wrapping below.
Cloud CLI Input
interface iap
wds
client-link 1 ssid SSID-NAME target
48:c0:93:63:0e:00 iap iap2 on
top
save
Expected Output
WDS client link 1 password changed
Note: SSID must be defined and have
identical authentication and encryption
settings on the target system.
Configuration may create a network loop
but spanning tree is disabled.
Spanning Tree Protocol enabled
With the WDS link configured on the client, let’s now check the status of the WDS link on both the host and client AP’s.
Cloud CLI Input
show wds
Expected Output
Link State Max IAP Target Array Target SSID Distance IAP(s) Channel(s) Connection(s)
---- ----- ------- ----------------- ----------- -------- ------------- --------------------- -------------
1 on 1 48:c0:93:63:0e:00 SSID-NAME iap4 60+64 up
If you are not seeing an active WDS connection on both the host and client AP’s, try running a show syslog on each AP, which you tell you what is happening on each side of the connection.
If you do have active WDS connections on both sides, then congratulations!
The final part of the configuration is to lock this WDS configuration in place. To do that, run the following script on both the host and client AP’s. Once your WDS configuration is locked you can confidently place WDS member AP’s into an XMS-Cloud profile to configure all the other settings on the AP’s.
Cloud CLI Input
interface iap
wds
lock enable
show
save
Expected Output
WDS Configuration : locked
Host Link Stations: disallowed
Roaming Threshold : 6 dB
Roaming Avg Weight: 50
This Array Address: 48:c0:93:63:0e:00
Saving configuration: OK