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R7900 as WAP: what will the router see?
I want to put a dedicated router in my home network rack, specifically a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter 12. Because of this, the routing capabilities of the R7900 will no longer be needed. I would, however, lik...
In order to keep SSID traffic organized inside the R7900, I think the radios are connected to what amounts to an internal trunk port. When an SSID is created and activated, the R7900 gives it a VLAN ID and tags any traffic from that SSID with the ID before putting it on the trunk port. Since the router doesn't know whether the device connected to it is 802.1q-capable, it strips the 802.1q header (which includes the VLAN ID) from the packet before it is broadcast to a wireless device, or sent out a LAN port to a connected device. The VLANs (and their IDs) are just used internally to keep SSID traffic straight. They are not exported, and cannot be configured to be.
Long story short: no joy with the R7900 for my use case.
> [...] Despite being generated from multiple sources (three radios and
> three or more SSIDs), the traffic would be pushed out to the router on
> one cable. I really don't see how the router would be able to
> differentiate the traffic, and attribute it to a particular source on
> the R7900, for the purposes of routing.
How would that differ from running an Ethernet cable to a network
switch? One cable, multiple devices. Each IP message packet includes
source and destination IP addresses, and, perhaps, VLAN tags.
> My use case is pretty simple. I'd like to segregate and isolate
> certain SSIDs on the R7900 in their own VLANs on the router (with their
> own address space, DNS, firewall rules, etc.). [...]
This seems to be some new meaning for the word "simple".
I don't deal with VLANs, so I know nothing, but if the R7900 provides
no options to associate a VLAN tag with an SSID, then I see no way to
make it do what you want.
Visit http://netgear.com/support , put in your model number, and look
for Documentation. Get the User Manual. If you find anything in it
involving VLANs on the LAN side, then you'll be doing better than I.
(But what do I know?)
In order to keep SSID traffic organized inside the R7900, I think the radios are connected to what amounts to an internal trunk port. When an SSID is created and activated, the R7900 gives it a VLAN ID and tags any traffic from that SSID with the ID before putting it on the trunk port. Since the router doesn't know whether the device connected to it is 802.1q-capable, it strips the 802.1q header (which includes the VLAN ID) from the packet before it is broadcast to a wireless device, or sent out a LAN port to a connected device. The VLANs (and their IDs) are just used internally to keep SSID traffic straight. They are not exported, and cannot be configured to be.
Long story short: no joy with the R7900 for my use case.