A workgroup bridge (WGB) is an Access Point (AP) mode to provide wireless connectivity to wired clients that are connected to the Ethernet port of the WGB AP. A WGB connects a wired network over a single wireless segment by learning the MAC addresses of its wired clients on the Ethernet interface and reporting them to the WLC through infrastructure AP using Internet Access Point Protocol (IAPP) messaging. The WGB establishes a single wireless connection to the root AP, which in turn, treats the WGB as a wireless client.

The mode supported in WGB for Embedded Wireless Controller is:

• Flex Mode: Central authentication and local switching.

  Note	Cenral authentication is supported on Wave 1 and Wave 2 APs, whereas local switching is supported only on Wave 2 APs.

The following features are supported for use with a WGB:

• MAC filtering is not supported for wired clients.

• Idle timeout is not supported for both WGB and wired clients.

• Session timeout is not applicable for wired clients.

• Web authentication is not supported.

• WGB supports only up to 20 clients.

• If you want to use a chain of certificates, copy all the CA certificates to a file and install it under a trust point on the WGB, else server certificate validation may fail.

• Wired clients connected to the WGB are not authenticated for security. Instead, the WGB is authenticated against the access point to which it associates. Therefore, we recommend that you physically secure the wired side of the WGB.

• Wired clients connected to a WGB inherit the WGB's QoS and AAA override attributes.

• To enable the WGB to communicate with the root AP, create a WLAN and make sure that Aironet IE is enabled under the Advanced settings.

From Cisco IOS XE Cupertino 17.8.1, it is possible to configure WGB in multiple Cisco access points (APs) simultaneously. By importing a running configuration, you can deploy multiple WGBs in a network and make them operational quicker. When new Cisco APs are added to the network, you can transfer an existing or working configuration to the new Cisco APs to make them operational. This enhancement eliminates the need to configure multiple Cisco APs using CLIs, after logging into them.

A network administrator can onboard Cisco APs using either of the following methods:

• Upload the working configuration from an existing Cisco AP to a server and download it to the newly deployed Cisco APs.

• Send a sample configuration to all the Cisco APs in the deployment.

This feature is supported only on the following Cisco APs:

• Cisco Aironet 1562 Access Points

• Cisco Aironet 2800 Access Points

• Cisco Aironet 3800 Access Points

• Cisco Catalyst 9105 Access Points

• Cisco Catalyst 9115 Access Points

• Cisco Catalyst 9120 Access Points

• Cisco Catalyst IW6300 Series Heavy Duty Access Points

For latest support information on various features in Cisco Wave 2 and 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) Access Points in Cisco IOS XE releases, see the Feature Matrix for Wave 2 and 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) Access Points document.