How Does Anchor Priority Ensure Guest Clients Use the Primary Anchor First?
An engineer is working for a manufacturing company that has a centralized deployment model. Guests at headquarters need wireless access for presentations, demonstrations, and sharing of information. The engineer must provide external users with secure guest access by connecting to anchor controllers on the DMZ. Auto-Anchor Mobility has been selected in the mobility group to accomplish it. Both anchors are configured as part of the mobility group for HQ. Which design approach ensures that clients connect to the primary controller first and are pushed to the secondary if the primary fails?
Community Votes
83% of anonymous learners picked answer A. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.
Community Insight
This item tests how Auto-Anchor Mobility ranks DMZ anchor controllers in a mobility group, and the common trap is assuming a lower number or an ECMP cost metric controls failover order instead of the anchor priority field.
In a Cisco centralized deployment using Auto-Anchor Mobility, guest clients at HQ must reach the DMZ anchor controllers in a defined order, and the anchor priority value on each controller determines which one is preferred. The correct design sets the primary anchor to priority 1, the highest value, so clients anchor to it first and are redirected to the secondary anchor only when the primary is unavailable.
The most common wrong answer is B — setting the secondary anchor to priority 1. Learners invert the scale, but in Cisco WLC anchor priority 1 is the highest preference, so putting 1 on the secondary would make guests land on the standby DMZ anchor first.
Community Discussion (3 comments)
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Expert Analysis
Why the Answer Is Correct
Auto-Anchor Mobility lets the foreign controller at HQ redirect guest clients to an anchor controller in the DMZ, and when several anchors are listed in the mobility group the anchor priority field decides which one is used. Cisco defines anchor priority on a 1-to-3 scale where 1 is the highest preference, so assigning priority 1 to the primary anchor makes it the first choice for every guest client. The secondary anchor stays in the group with a lower priority and is only used when the primary anchor is unreachable, which is exactly the requirement stated in the scenario. This matches the community view: Bembs stated "1 is the highest priority for mobility", and Farhad123 pointed out that because auto-anchor is enabled "clients should automatically associate with the primary anchor controller if it's available".Why the Other Options Are Wrong
Option B reverses the scale by giving the secondary anchor priority 1, which would make the backup DMZ controller the preferred target and defeat the intent of a primary/secondary failover design. Option C and Option D both introduce ECMP path selection, which is a routing concept for load-balancing traffic across equal-cost paths; anchor selection in Auto-Anchor Mobility is not driven by routing cost, so neither ECMP variant controls which DMZ anchor a guest client is tunneled to. Option D compounds the error by weighting the path toward the secondary, again producing the opposite of the required behavior. Only the anchor priority attribute on the controller entries governs the primary-then-secondary order.Community Comment Notes
Learner voting strongly favors the priority-on-primary approach, with Bembs summarizing the rule as "1 is the highest priority for mobility". Farhad123 elaborated that, with Auto-Anchor Mobility enabled, clients associate with the primary anchor whenever it is available, which is why the primary must hold the top priority. A minority view came from Lakshan__97, who selected the secondary-priority option without further justification; that position ignores the 1-is-highest convention documented for anchor priority. Taken together, the comments reinforce that the decisive configuration value is the priority assigned to the primary anchor, not a path cost.Exam Strategy
Memorize the anchor priority scale (1 = highest, 3 = lowest) and remember that Auto-Anchor Mobility always prefers the highest-priority anchor in the mobility group before falling back. When a question mentions ECMP costs in an anchor-selection scenario, treat it as a distractor unless the stem is specifically about routing or path preference.Exam Strategy
Anchor priority questions hinge on the 1-is-highest convention, so confirm which controller should be preferred before reading the options. If an option introduces ECMP or routing cost metrics into an Auto-Anchor Mobility scenario, eliminate it — anchor selection is a mobility-group attribute, not a routing decision.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does setting anchor priority to 1 make an anchor controller the preferred one?
In Cisco Auto-Anchor Mobility, anchor priority runs from 1 (highest) to 3 (lowest). Assigning 1 to the primary DMZ anchor makes it the first anchor selected for guest clients.
Can ECMP cost be used instead of anchor priority to steer guest clients?
No. ECMP is a routing load-balancing mechanism, while Auto-Anchor Mobility selects the DMZ anchor through the priority value in the mobility group's anchor list.