CAPWAP Wireless VLAN in Routed Campus LAN

Question

I am configuring CISCO Wireless LAN Controller in College campus. we have the following components
 1. CISCO 4510R as core switch and a centralized WLC is connected to Core Switch
 2. CISCO 3560 L3 switch at Distribution Layer Switch
 3. CISCO LWAP 1142
I want to configure Wireless VLAN in a college campus. Wireless LAN.  The requirement is to configure Distribution switch as L3 so that VLAN will not reach till the Core Switch. That is the Link between Distribution and Core Switch will be Layer 3 routed link and not a Trunk Link.
Since it is a routed back bone environment, VLAN is configured only in distribution layer switches. So, these configured VLAN will not reach core
switch.
With that said, is it technically possible to achieve the Wireless VLAN in this above proposed setup.?
Do I have to configure Trunk between Distribution Switch (APs are connected) and Core Switch (WLC is connected), to pass the Wireless VLAN in the trunk link?
Advance Thanks for reading and helping to get it clarified
SAIRAM

Answer 1

We are in the process of moving to a mostly routed Campus, and had similar questions and a few more. We will be using only EIGRP, with each enclave set-up as a stub. I was wondering if I can modify our wireless network to be strictly routed, and remove all the trunk/access configurations from the switch ports facing  theAPs, and hard code (static) all of them to IP routed ports. We only have one WLC active, with one back-up. The WLC is facing our core switches in a LAG set-up. The network was originally set-up with all the dynamic interfaces for each AP set-up in a GLBP fashion between our two cores. Each AP had a dynamic interface created in the WLC and added to one AP group. All of our APs are now connected via ethernet to the wired infrastructure, so none of our APs are in true MESH fashion anymore. We use Microsoft DHCP to issue out IPs to our APs.
I was wondering if I can remove the dynamic interfaces from the WLC, and use EIGRP to sort of the routing of our wireless network. I would create L3 SVIs (multiple in some cases) on all the switches that APs are attached too, and modify each Microsoft DHCP scope to point to whatever AP model was used and to point to the WLC. Now, what I'm unsure on, how would this behave with no Native Vlan/User Vlans configured on trunk ports pointing toward the AP. I was thinking of using what was once used at the Native Vlan (subnet info), and using that same subnet to create a IP routed port facing the AP and modify the AP IP via the WLC to select static assign. I can place IP helper addresses under the routed port to face our DHCP server (not sure if this really matters, if I already place them under the user L3 SVIs). Before, I had a DHCP scope for the native and user subnet. Would the AP still be able to connect to the WLC correctly, if I delete the scope (used before for the native vlan), since it usually resolved the WLC IP via option 43 (it can use DNS instead). I would imagine so, since I will be placing these networks under EIGRP to advertise within our Campus, which has L3 reachability to the WLC. And under the user subnets, I would still configure the Microsoft DHCP scope to face the AP model and controller IP. There just woundn't be a scope for the subnet that use to be for the Native Vlan. For any new set-up, I would pre-provision the AP under a user subnet access port, and then hard code it within the controller a static IP, to deploy later at the new site. For routed networks, are dynamic interfaces really necessary on the WLC? As long as L3 is working as intended, and the user switch has reachability to the Microsoft DHCP server, then users should be able to pull IPs fine through, correct? I've tested already with a PTP bridge we have, and hardcoded the ports to IP routed ports, and advertised it via EIGRP, and haven't noticed any issues with the customers pulling new IPs. I wanted to gather more information before deploying this for across the board to our other types of wireless set-ups. I'm not using FlexConnect. I've moved most of our 1552e APs over to local mode recently, which have wired connections to the LAN.