Recommendation: DHCP or Static for WAP
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How would you recommend that I set my wireless access points (Cisco WAP300) configuration - DHCP or manually set the wap ip in the wap? These 5 waps connect to an unmanaged switch which is connected to a nic.
Thanks for taking the time to answer this basic question. Just wondering best practices.
Rob
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I manually set mine… usually something like
pfsense - 192.168.4.1
AP #1 - 192.168.4.2
AP #2 - 192.168.4.3
etc...That way I always know where they are if I need to admin them...
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If I created a static ip in pfsense for each WAP MAC that will accomplish the same thing. Is there any advantage to defining the static mapping in pfsense vs the wap itself?
thanks a bunch for your patience.
Rob -
Well… not 100% certain on this, but I think if you have it assigned via DHCP then you will have an issue if it is not connected to the pfSense server and you try to get to its administrative interface - since it will not be given an IP address.
I believe, if you assign a static address to it and it is disconnected then you can still set your client to any address in the same subnet and still get to the web management UI. For example, set the PC to 192.168.4.50 and plug into a LAN port and you should still be able to get to the router (at say 192.168.4.2).
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In our company, we have all ap connected with dhcp, because we have enough power and have not fixed places for APs, they change every month.
But here i think you have not so much APs and it will tactically clever to set every ap an static ip. You know exactly where the AP is in the network and don`t have to look for the right ip of AP XY.
The next thing is, we are speaking here of small business and home devices. So this is only my mind, but it would save cpu and memory if you don`t set up a dhcp server. Less to do for one device, more power for other services.