Mesh APs and WiFi-6 capability

Services & wireless
Advanced
12 min
2 steps
Cisco IOS-XE-style

Two unrelated knobs that both belong to a real-world WLC deployment (NV-WLC-9800 / IOS-XE-shape): - Mesh APs (RAP / MAP): a wifi-ap device gains mesh.role (standalone | root | child) and mesh.meshParent. show wireless mesh summary walks the topology and reports parent/children relationships, surfacing orphaned children whose declared parent is missing. - WiFi-6 (802.11ax): WLAN profile gains protocol (a/b/g/n/ac/ax), bssColor (1..63 spatial-reuse identifier), spatialStreams (1..8). show wlan capability reports the advertised radio profile per WLAN. Both are config-and-show slices: the simulator's frame-level model doesn't simulate radio waves, so these are operator-visible values and verification surfaces — useful for asserting "yes the corp WLAN advertises ax with BSS color 7" or "yes MAP1's parent is RAP and MAP2 hangs off MAP1."

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Scenario

Real Cisco mesh deployments use two AP roles: - RAP (Root AP): wired uplink to the LAN. Joins the WLC over Ethernet, also hosts a wireless backhaul radio that serves child MAPs. - MAP (Mesh AP): no wired uplink. Joins the WLC indirectly through its parent's wireless backhaul. Multi-hop mesh chains (MAP → MAP → RAP) are common at large outdoor deployments. The simulator captures the topology tree without modeling the radio backhaul — a child MAP needs IP connectivity to the WLC, which it has via its parent's wired uplink in the topology. The most operator-relevant 802.11ax knobs: - protocol: highest generation advertised. Corp WLANs typically ax; legacy / IoT WLANs may stay at n or g for compatibility. - bssColor: 1..63 BSS color used for spatial reuse. Two BSSes within range that share a color see each other as same-color contention domain. - spatialStreams: 1..8. Defaults to 2 (the typical 2x2 deployment); high-density APs go to 4 or 8. These ride alongside the existing security mode (open / wpa2-psk / wpa2-enterprise / wpa3-sae / wpa3-enterprise). WPA3 + ax is the modern Wi-Fi 6E baseline. - Frame-level 802.11: no MU-MIMO scheduling, no OFDMA RU allocation, no airtime fairness. The simulator stays at the L3+ abstraction. - Mesh backhaul radio: no airtime / link-quality between RAP and MAP. The mesh tree is a topology pattern, not a radio simulation. - WPA3 cryptographic frames: SAE handshake, PMK derivation. The security-mode field round-trips through config but the simulator's frame layer doesn't carry the encrypted payload.

Topology

1 × wireless controller, 3 × access point · Cisco IOS-XE-style

WLC1 — wireless controller
RAP — access point
MAP1 — access point
MAP2 — access point

What you will do

On WLC1, run show wireless mesh summary. Output should list 3 mesh APs: RAP (root, child = MAP1); MAP1 (child of RAP, child = MAP2); MAP2 (child of MAP1, no children).
On WLC1, run show wlan capability. The corp-wifi WLAN should report ax / 4 streams / BSS color 7; legacy-wifi reports n / 2 streams / no BSS color.

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Mesh APs and WiFi-6 capability

Scenario

Topology

What you will do

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