SoftGRE Tunneling Support Over a Wi-Fi Network

Software Generic Routing Encapsulation (SoftGRE) tunneling involves transmitting encapsulated data packets in WLAN deployments to manage and direct AP traffic to a centralized gateway.

Feature Overview

This technique encapsulates the original data packets within GRE packets, creating a virtual point-to-point link over the existing network infrastructure, which adds security and enables centralized traffic distribution by establishing a tunnel from the APs to a SoftGRE gateway.

Managing and directing traffic efficiently is crucial for maintaining optimal network performance. SoftGRE tunneling plays a pivotal role in achieving this by encapsulating data packets and transmitting them over various network types.

The SoftGRE Tunneling Support feature allows you to:

  • Create a SoftGRE tunnel profile
  • Bind the profile to a specific venue and Wi-Fi network for tunneling AP traffic to a SoftGRE gateway.

Following are the benefits:

  • Enhanced flexibility: Adaptability to different network environments to work with various types of networks.
  • Centralized traffic management and efficiency: Centralized control of network traffic, enabling more efficient and consistent application of network policies.

Requirements

This feature has no special hardware or software requirements for feature enablement or usage.

Considerations

  • A maximum of 64 SoftGRE tunnel profiles can be created per RUCKUS One tenant account, but only three can be enabled per venue and only one enabled per Wi-Fi network.
  • Each SoftGRE profile name must be unique.
  • All the gateway addresses in the enabled SoftGRE profiles must be different, including primary and secondary gateway IP addresses in a single SoftGRE profile.
  • SoftGRE tunneling is not supported on a Captive Portal network.
  • A SoftGRE profile cannot be deleted after it is activated in a venue.
  • Client Isolation setting (Wi-Fi Networks > Create New/Edit Network > More Settings > Network Control tab) works as expected when SoftGRE tunnel is configured.
  • VLAN setting (Wi-Fi Networks > Create New/Edit Network > More Settings > Network Control tab) works as expected when SoftGRE tunnel is configured.

Best Practices

This feature has no special recommendations for feature enablement or usage.

Prerequisites

This feature has no prerequisites to feature enablement or usage.

Limitations

Following are some limitations when a SoftGRE tunnel is established between the AP and RUCKUS WAN Gateway (RWG) in RUCKUS One:
  • The RUCKUS WAN Gateway (RWG), in both solo and clustered setups, supports only one pseudo-interface to configure the SoftGRE tunnel. Multiple APs can establish a SoftGRE tunnel to the single pseudo-interface.
  • The configuration between RUCKUS One and RWG do not synchronize because of the SoftGRE tunnel profile configuration on RUCKUS One. However, the user can still import the configuration from RUCKUS One to RWG. RWG is managed independently, while RUCKUS One is used to configure and manage the APs for the SoftGRE tunnel.