Wireless-only Fabric uses fabric constructs to garner the benefits of a fabric. In this architecture, a fabric is built on top of existing traditional network designs such as multi-tier, Routed Access, and VSS network. It uses a LISP control plane together with VXLAN encapsulation for the overlay data plane traffic. The wireless control plane remains intact with CAPWAP tunnels initiating on the APs and terminating on a Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controller or AireOS controller. The Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controller can function in a dedicated appliance, directly in a switch, or in a VM.

Cisco Catalyst 9800 Wireless Controller for Switch delivers all the benefits of a centralized control and management plane (easy to configure, upgrade, troubleshoot, etc) and the maximum throughput or performance of a distributed forwarding plane. The distributed data plane allows services such as AVC to scale. In this new model, the wireless control plane is not split between MC and MA. The switch is detached from the wireless control plane and the controller takes care of the wireless function and the traffic switching is done by the Cisco Access Switch.

Since the wireless functionality is required to be enabled only on few nodes of the network, you can install Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controller as a separate package on the switch on a need basis. The sub-package is installed on top of the base image and a reload is required to activate the sub-package.

Note	The sub-package is an optional binary that contains the entire Cisco Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controller software.

Note

Cisco Catalyst 9800 Wireless Controller software on the Cisco Catalyst 9300 switches must be provisioned and deployed on the switch using Cisco DNA Center, and it cannot be configured as a standalone controller. For mode details, see the Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches Hardware Installation Guide.

Note	SNMP is not supported on Catalyst 9800 Embedded Wireless Controller for Switch.