Ruckus WDS with third party wireless bridge

Summary

Can any third party wireless bridges be used with Ruckus? Maybe, under certain conditions.

Question

Can third party wireless bridges be configured to work with Ruckus?

Customer Environment

ZD managed APs, and wishing to use third party wireless bridges to connect clients behind them.

Troubleshooting Steps

Check DHCP lease table for subnet client wireless bridge connects to, for client MACs connected behind the bridge.

Workaround

We frequently receive tickets for users trying to bridge users behind a <cu-bridge-name> wireless bridge. Ruckus does not, and has not ever supported standard WDS AP bridging as outlined on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_distribution_system

We do use the WDS frame format (4 MAC address) to provide transparent bridging, a development from our work with IPtv and our now extinct MediaFlex product line, though we no longer sell the CPE devices that can bridge client traffic. All ZoneDirector managed APs have WDS enabled by default.

The key to diagnosing client bridge issues is to look at ARP table and DHCP lease tables on the wired network, to understand how MAC addresses are handled. Can you see MAC addresses of the clients beyond the <cu-mfgr> bridge, in the DHCP server lease table?

When attempting to connect non-Ruckus wireless bridge devices, we can test by disabling directed-DHCP, our proprietary conversion of broadcast to unicast of DHCP offer and ack messages, and evaluate how this affects the WDS with wireless bridge clients.

rkscli: set qos directedDHCP
usage: set qos directedDHCP {enable|disable}
rkscli:

From ZD CLI: remote_ap_cli –A “set qos directedDHCP disable”

The “-A” switch before the double-quoted AP command, means apply to all currently connected APs.

We have successfully bridged clients using Ubiquity M5 client bridges with WDS option, under very specific conditions with 9.7.1+ ZD firmware.

WLAN setting on ZD -- standard Ruckus WLAN, WPA-PSK, no tunnel, no VLAN, no isolation (WPA-PSK is important as we saw open does not work)

If this does not help to provide the far side clients with an IP address, then we can say with certainty that this <third-party manufacturer> wifi bridge is not compatible (with Ruckus proprietary WDS).

Resolution

Ruckus does not support standard WDS.

KBA-1423: Clients behind third party wireless bridge are unable to obtain DHCP IP address

Article Number:
000003332

Updated:
December 10, 2019 01:19 PM (over 4 years ago)

Tags:
Known Issues and Workarounds, ZoneDirector

Votes:
2

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