One embodiment of the present invention provides a wireless network controller. The wireless network controller includes a data structure, a tunnel management scheme, an encapsulation mechanism, and a forwarding mechanism. The data structure stores a TRILL RBridge identifier associated with a remote wireless network controller. The tunnel management mechanism maintains a tunnel with a local access point, and the encapsulation mechanism encapsulates a packet received from the tunnel with a TRILL header which includes the RBridge identifier of the remote wireless network controller. The forwarding mechanism forwards the encapsulated packet.