Access Points | SC-WiFi

Cisco Wave2 site survey how-to

March 20, 2017 by scwifi 16 Comments

So, you have a shiny new Cisco 802.11ac wave 2 Access Point and you went to go grab the autonomous code for it to do an APoS survey – but then realized there isn’t autonomous code for the 2802 or 3802 (or any other wave 2) Cisco AP, huh? You may have noticed that there is a new product called Mobility Express. You can use this ‘controller on an AP’. Here is a guide I co-authored for doing just this.

-Sam

Summary:

Cisco 802.11ac Wave 2 APs do not run IOS like previous platforms. This presents a challenge when trying to perform an AP on a Stick site survey with only a battery pack. The standalone mode for these Access Points is achieved using Mobility Express – or the function to use the integrated WLC on the Access Point to control the radio functionality in a standalone fashion.

Prerequisites:

8.3MR1 code supporting Mobility Express for your Access Point
Local power source for your Access Point (AIR-PWR-C or site survey battery with sufficient power)
Operational Standalone or Virtual Wireless Lan Controller running 8.2MR2 or 8.3 for configuring the Access Point mode and moving the images
TFTP server
802.11ac Wave 2 Access Point (Please note, the 1810 platform is not supported at the time of this writing)
A serial console cable to watch/configure your AP

Process:

Step 1) Join your Access Point to your local WLC as you would during a normal deployment.

For the 2800/3800 platforms, you must be running a minimum of 8.2MR2 or 8.3 for step 1. For 1830/1850, there is no similar requirement aside from running a release that supports those platforms. Please note that this is not the above referenced ME image version which will be used in step 2.

Step 2) Convert the Access Point to Mobility Express mode using the correct image.

This is accomplished by going to the console of the AP and logging in, then enabling, then using the ap-type command to convert the AP over to Mobility Express and download the new image from your TFTP server. To get the correct AP image file, you will need to decompress the image bundle and use the correct image for your AP platform. For example:

1830/1850 you should use ap1g4
2800/3800 you should use ap3g3

Note: You can also use the platform specific ME image from CCO if you have that available. If you’re using a Universal SKU AP, you should wait for it to regulatory prime before trying to convert the image to make sure you don’t incur a reboot mid-code change.

Once your AP goes down for a reboot, disconnect the LAN cable and ensure its powered by local power or your survey battery pack:

Step 3) Wait for your Access Point to boot completely.

At this point your Access Point will do several things. It will boot and you will see about 2 minutes of the following messages:

Once these timeout, the Access Point will boot the Mobility Express WLC automatically:

Step 4) Configure the WLC using the following values:

Would you like to terminate autoinstall? [yes]: yes
Enter Administrative User Name (24 characters max): admin
Enter Administrative Password (3 to 24 characters): Cisco123
Re-enter Administrative Password : Cisco123
System Name [Cisco_11:aa:1a] (31 characters max): ME_WLC
Enter Country Code list (enter ‘help’ for a list of countries) [US]: US
Configure a NTP server now? [YES][no]: no
Configure the system time now? [YES][no]: yes
Enter the date in MM/DD/YY format: <date>
Enter the time in HH:MM:SS format: <time>
Enter timezone location index (enter ‘help’ for a list of timezones): 7
Management Interface IP Address: 192.168.1.2
Management Interface Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Management Interface Default Router: 192.168.1.1
Create Management DHCP Scope? [yes][NO]: yes
DHCP Network : 192.168.1.0
DHCP Netmask : 255.255.255.0
Router IP: 192.168.1.1
Start DHCP IP address: 192.168.1.10
Stop DHCP IP address: 192.168.1.200
DomainName : me.local
DNS Server : [OPENDNS][user DNS] OPENDNS
Create Employee Network? [YES][no]: yes
Employee Network Name (SSID)?: survey_ME
NOTE, USE YOUR INITIALS INSTEAD OF ‘ME’ TO DIFFERENTIATE YOUR SSID
Employee VLAN Identifier? [MGMT][1-4095]: MGMT
Employee Network Security? [PSK][enterprise]: PSK
Employee PSK Passphrase (8-38 characters)?: <temp key>
Re-enter Employee PSK Passphrase: <temp key>
Create Guest Network? [yes][NO]: no
Enable RF Parameter Optimization? [YES][no]: no
Configuration correct? If yes, system will save it and reset. [yes][NO]: yes

It is highly recommended to use the values above. Once the Access Point reboots continue on.

Step 5) Clean up the AP

Some of the defaults are not completely friendly. We’ll clean those up now. Discover the name of the Access Point using ‘show ap summary’ and rename it to something more friendly like ‘ap’. It should be noted that renaming your Access Point to ‘ap’ will make configurations easier and in line with the examples below, but if you’re part of a larger team and require unique Access Point names, this is where you would set them, making note to use your defined Access Point name instead of the shortened name ‘ap’ as described in the rest of this document.

Next we want to disable the PSK security on the WLAN for easier association and testing and enable Aironet Extensions to include the AP name in beacons. This step is optional, but recommended. You must first disable the WLAN, the disable the PSK, then re-enable the WLAN:

(Cisco Controller) >config wlan disable 1
(Cisco Controller) >config wlan security wpa disable 1
(Cisco Controller) >config wlan ccx aironetIeSupport enable 1
(Cisco Controller) >config wlan enable 1
(Cisco Controller) >save config
Are you sure you want to save? (y/n) y

Once you’ve made these changes, perform a ‘save config’ as shown on the WLC to ensure the changes aren’t overwritten.

Step 6) Configure your radios for site survey specifics including channel and TX power.

To set these values, you must admin disable the radio, make the change, then re-enable it. Remember, these are the same commands you’d use on a production, bare-metal WLC and are not new. Here are a few examples:

To change the 2.4GHz radio to channel 6:
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11b disable ap
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11b channel ap ap 6
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11b enable ap

To change the 2.4GHz radio to power level 3:
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11b disable ap
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11b txPower ap ap 3
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11b enable ap

To change the 5GHz radio to channel 44:
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a disable ap
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a channel ap ap 44
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a enable ap

To change the 5GHz radio to power level 5:
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a disable ap
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a txpower ap ap 5
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a enable ap

To change the 5GHz radio width to 40MHz:
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a disable ap
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a chan_width ap 40
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a enable ap

Of course, you can couple all of these commands together to reduce the number of times you’re disabling your radio if you’re doing an initial configuration. Here is an example of setting the radios both to power level 2 and the 2.4GHz radio to channel 11, and the 5GHz channel to 100@40MHz all in one script:

(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11b disable ap
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a disable ap
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11b channel ap ap 11
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11b txPower ap ap 2
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a channel ap ap 100
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a txpower ap ap 2
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a chan_width ap 40
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11b enable ap
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11a enable ap

To see the channel of the Access Point currently configured, use the ‘show ap channel ap’ command:

To see the power level of the Access Point currently configured, use the ‘show ap config slot 0 ap’ (for 2.4GHz) or ‘show ap config slot 1 ap’ (for 5GHz’ command and look for the following data:

Alternatively, use the grep command to just pick out the data you’re interested in:

Step 7) Alternative management via the WLC GUI

If you’ve followed this guide up till now, you can also access the management interface of the WLC by using your PC and joining your open survey SSID. Then open a web browser and navigate to https://192.168.1.2/ .

Step 8) Putting it all back the way you found it

To convert the AP back to capwap mode and undo this configuration, you must goto the AP console using ‘apciscoshell’ and perform the ‘ap-type’ command again:

Addendum:

Dual role radio notes:

The AP2800 and AP3800 both include the ability to change the slot 0 radios personality from 2.4GHz to 5GHz. This presents some unique configuration considerations as follows:

To convert the XOR radio from the default 2.4GHz to 5GHz and change its channel to 40 @ 40MHz wide use:
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11-abgn disable ap
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11-abgn role ap manual client-serving
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11-abgn band ap ap 5GHz
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11-abgn channel ap ap 40
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11-abgn chan_width ap 40
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11-abgn enable ap

The following should be noted for this configuration:

When you convert the XOR radio into 5GHz mode, you must use a channel that is 100MHz apart from the slot 1 radio in the Access Point. When you configure the XOR radio into 5GHz mode on an ‘e’ model of AP, you must have an external antenna plugged into the DART connector or this configuration will fail. When you configure the XOR radio into 5GHz mode on an ‘i’ model of AP, the tx power will be fixed and not modifiable (by design) to its lowest possible value to retain micro-cell integrity.

To change the XOR radio from a configured 5GHz to 2.4GHz and change its channel to 6 use:

(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11-abgn disable ap
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11-abgn band ap ap 2.4GHz
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11-abgn channel ap ap 6
(Cisco Controller) >config 802.11-abgn enable ap

Filed under 802.11ac, Access Points, Cisco, Surveying, Wireless, WLC

All about DART

June 30, 2016 by scwifi 3 Comments

Yes, I’m writing a blog post on a connector. Just a connector. If you’re like me, you can appreciate the little things in life. This is one of those times that something little snuck past me and it wasn’t until now that I’m starting to fully appreciate it’s impact and importance. When Cisco launched their 2800/3800 APs, dual 5GHz was certainly at the top of the list of the most talked about features (see #MFD session here!). This came with some caveats (as all new features do) and using a separate set of antennas for the second 5GHz radio was the biggest. This is handled on the internal antenna models with an in-built extra set of antennas, but on the external antenna models, this presented a bit of a challenge. In the wide world of antenna connectors, in the Wi-Fi space, we commonly deal with RP-SMA, RP-TNC, and N-type connectors depending on your vendor and the deployment type. In the Cisco world, that’s RP-TNC for indoor APs. With a single, 4 element antenna today, that’s four connectors (or four, single element antennas). With two antennas, that drives the number of antenna connectors up to a whopping 8 cables you’re looking to have coming out of your AP! 8 cables, 8 connectors, it gets messy quick. Enter the DART connector:

All covered up!

Inconspicuously located on the side of the AP, behind a little door, the new DART connector reveals itself in a complex looking array of pins and connectors in a tight external facing form factor. Here’s the interesting part though, this isn’t a new connector! In fact, it’s been shipping to the public for a little bit now in the form of the Cisco Hyperlocation module and antenna!

Hyperlocation with DART

DART on Hyperlocation Exposed!

So, that’s all great and all, but what’s really *in* the DART connector? DART stands for Digital Analog Radio Termination and it does all of those wonderful things. Firstly, the analog antenna connectors that we use (so we don’t have 8 RP-TNC ports on our AP) are the 4 larger pins across the bottom of the connector.

Look at all those pins!

When we use the DART to RP-TNC pig tail for backwards compatibility with shipping antennas, these are the connectors that map directly to the 4 RP-TNC connectors. In short, these are the 4 analog ports that carry the actual analog signal through the connector.

DART to RP-TNC Cable!

Fully assembled!

For existing RP-TNC based antennas

On the cable end!

Which leave us with the extra 16 pins. Those are the ‘Digital’ piece of the DART connector and can be used for a variety of uses. Initially, this is used to identify the type of cable that is attached to the DART connector. For example, in the Hyperlocation module, this shows up on the AP details:

Circular Antenna

For the DART to RP-TNC connector, this is in the form of a simple resistor that maps two of the pins back to each other:

DART disassembled

It’s easy to see that there’s quite a bit of left over functionality that could be used in a connector of this type. Today if we use very high gain antennas we have to have multiple models of APs (see the 3602p and 3702p). If we could identify the gain of the antenna by way of an automated mechanism, we could have the AP auto adjust itself to not exceed EIRP. Another potential use case is DART native versions of our existing antennas in a simple to use connector. Imagine not having to screw on connectors anymore! With a quick-connect antenna mechanism that auto-IDs the antenna capabilities to the AP, this could certainly be the new connector of choice for external antennas in the future!

With DART connector on edge.

Note the DART connector on the left.

Filed under Access Points, Cisco, FCC, Wireless Tech Field Day

The Cloud giveth, the Cloud taketh away

February 1, 2016 by scwifi 14 Comments

We all love ‘The Cloud’. It’s flexible, fast, always (mostly) available, and takes our business agility to heretofore unknown heights – but what happens when the service you’re using in the cloud goes a different direction than you need or want it to?

Meraki has been touting the Cloud flexibility as *the* single most important reason to move to their infrastructure management platform. This brings with it a whole host of great things like access-anywhere management, rapid feature development, and a whole new paradigm of how to configure your infrastructure equipment. In one move, Cisco has rocketed past the CLI based days of old, past ‘here’s a pretty GUI’ to 100% web driven, ‘don’t worry your pretty little head about it’ dashboards for everything from configuration, monitoring, troubleshooting, and deployment. It works and it works well.

Today marks the closing of Copy – a Cloud based file sync service from Barracuda and it got me thinking. When someone shudders their doors and it’s ‘just files’, you go to another Cloud based service provider – in this case Dropbox or box.com. What happens when/if Meraki goes away? Okay, they’re under the wing of big-brother Cisco now, so the chances of that happening are basically nil, but what if you ratchet that concern back a notch? What if they make a change you don’t like? What about ‘perpetual beta’ features such as the Remote Control that have been in beta since prior to the Cisco acquisition? What happens if you don’t pay your bill? Those of us familiar with Cloud services like Office 365 know that when you stop paying, you stop playing and for software based services (like Copy today) that doesn’t seem to as big as a deal to most people. What happens when that service is your network?

Perpetual Beta features

When Meraki adds a new feature to their product, the Cloud enables rapid deployment of those features. This is good. What happens when they remove a feature you use such as WAN Optimization? As you an see here Meraki decided to retire what they perceived to be either a little-used feature or a feature that was too difficult to maintain to keep functioning properly.

WAN Optimization, gone baby, gone!

What happens when Meraki decides to artificially cap the performance of your router (intentionally or unintentionally) to 50M?

Astute reddit users, always on the lookout.

While the WAN Optimization removal is clearly an intentional move and the Z1 cap is clearly unintentional, these both raise very significant questions about allowing someone else to be the ultimate authority for the features that are deployed on hardware you’ve purchased. What is your recourse when this happens? Open a support ticket? Make a wish? Roll back the firmware (hah!)? With no fail-safe mode of operation by design, when you lock yourself into a Cloud based infrastructure product, you are ultimately at the mercy of using features how and where they determine are best suited. Your only recourse is to scrap your gear if they make a decision to go in a direction that you no longer support. What is the environmental impact to this business model? How many Cloud-only products end up in landfills because of expired licenses? How much eWaste is generated because the product has stopped functioning (not through MTBF, but intentionally crippling through code)? You used to have options like Cucumber Tony and OpenWRT, but apparently Meraki has fixed the technical loophole that those folks used to use for the MR-12 and MR-16 Access Points by way of a Trusted Platform Module.

What is your take on Meraki and other Cloud based services that you operate your business with? Cloud based products are great and work as designed – but is loss of features something you consider prior to your investment in a solution? Does your organization rely on perpetually beta features that never seem to make it into production? Has a feature been ‘pulled out from underneath you’? What are you doing with that old AP/switch/firewall that is perfectly good hardware but you let the license lapse on? Inquiring minds want to know – please leave me a comment and let me know how you and your organization handles this kind of quandary!

Filed under Access Points, Cisco, Meraki, Wireless

10 reasons to take another look at 2015 Cisco Mobility

November 1, 2015 by scwifi 7 Comments

Let’s face it, Cisco is huge. They’re massive, and occasionally they get things wrong. If you’ve strayed away from Cisco in the past year (or longer) because of a specific issue or gap, it’s high time you took another look. The Cisco Mobility offerings today are a far cry from what they were just an easy year back. Here are 10 great reasons to go get reacquainted with the 2015 Cisco Mobility offerings:

1) 5520/8540 WLCs

The introduction of a Converged Access 60G solution highlighted the gaps in the WLC portfolio in the 20/40G of throughput range. Both of these new controllers (one 20G, one 40G capable) are based on the more mature AireOS codebase running 8.1 and later. While this doesn’t mark an EOS/EOL announcement for the 5508 (clocking in at 8G), it does give that 7 year old platform some good alternatives for lifecycle management.

2) Prime Infrastructure 2.2 then 3.0

Ever since WCS was taken over and moulded into the NCS then Prime Infrastructure products, it’s always bore the scars of a legacy mired in Adobe Flash performance issues. Couple that with a dramatic uptick in features and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. The new versions of Prime Infrastructure are actually performing as well as they should be starting at about the 2.2 version and the new UI of Prime Infrastructure 3.0 completely moves away from Flash and demonstrates a significant re-think of the product – including ‘Make a wish!’.

3) 802.11ac wave 2

Let’s not forget the fun stuff – APs and radios. With competitively positioned 802.11ac Wave 2 products, Cisco is staying in the lead of the latest and greatest standards. With impressive throughput numbers, multiple gigabit uplinks, and fancy new features like MU-MIMO, the 1830/1850 APs are clearly paving the way for the next generation of some pretty obviously numbered future platforms. The only question is, what does Cisco have in store for us next?

4) HALO

No, not the game – the new Hyper-Location Module and antenna array. Cisco is delivering on the promise that the industry made to us oh so many years ago about leveraging your WiFi network as a platform for tracking your enterprises assets. Touting down to 1 meter accuracy, this module for your AP3600/AP3700s will take your location fidelity ‘to the next level’.

5) Mobility Express

Those that don’t like having a bare metal controller and don’t see the need for controller based features (such as centralized data plane), we now have a ‘controller on the AP’ option! This allows us to focus on the smaller deployments without the extra cost and complexity (such as it is) for those customers. This isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ approach that we’ve seen in the past, but rather an evolution of a well thought out strategy to bring enterprise features to every market segment.

6) UI improvements

Along with the Mobility Express product, the ‘metal WLCs’ are sporting a new user interface and out of the box setup experience (Day 0 and Day 1 support). If you’ve felt the WLC interface was a bit dated in the past, go take a gander at the plethora of new graphs, charts, and actual usable data about your infrastructure – all without having to goto a larger NMS platform!

7) CMX Evolution

The MSE product is finally getting some legs under the advanced location pieces. This easy to deploy ‘for everyone’ product starts to bring some pretty insightful analytics to any sized deployment – all the way down to a ‘no maps required’ presence analytics and all the way up to a Hyperlocation enabled, social media engagement platform. With both on premises and cloud based offerings available, it really is very easy to start getting very insightful data out of any sized network.

8) CCIE Wireless version 3

The dated CCIE (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert, Wireless) exam has been updated to include software and hardware platforms from this year. You can now tackle one of the industries most challenging certifications on contemporary labs that are actually relevant to solutions you’re deploying today!

9) UX domain APs

See my previous blog on the topic for a more in-depth look at the UX products, but for those buying and deploying APs spanning multiple countries, this is a pretty good way to reduce a ton of deployment and ordering complexities. By standardizing on a single SKU globally, you can make quick work of some of the logistics nightmares of the past.

10) Cisco ONE licensing

Yes, licensing is boring, complicated, and expensive. Cisco ONE addresses all three of those pain points in one easy go. With a ‘count the AP’ approach to licensing, you can now start to take advantage of all of the above products in an easy to consume, deploy, and license fashion – without breaking the bank. For example, if you wanted to replace your old WLC with a new one, in the past, you would end up repurchasing your AP licenses. In this model, all products start at 0 APs and you pick the size that’s right for you – at any scale. Pick the solutions you want to deploy: ISE, Prime Infrastructure, advanced location analytics, etc – and go! A significant departure from the traditional licensing model in Cisco-land.

I know that a ‘recap overview’ blog sometimes seems too lofty, but there really is a ton to see if you’ve been unplugged from the Cisco world over the past year or so. Take a deep breath and plunge back in at any level and you’ll find something new that wasn’t there before. The Cisco ship sometimes turns slowly and sometimes it’s easy to forget that there is innovation happening all over the mobility space in San Jose.

Disclaimer: I was part of the Wireless Field Day 8 delegation to Cisco where we learned about several of the above topics. For more information on Cisco’s appearance at WFD8, go check out the video!

Filed under 802.11ac, Access Points, Cisco, Prime, Wireless, Wireless Tech Field Day, WLC

UX Domain APs

October 26, 2015 by scwifi 5 Comments

In the wireless world, we’re constrained by regulatory requirements. These are, at their core, different rules by which we must abide by when we’re operating wireless equipment. Each country has their own set of requirements and restrictions – each manifesting itself in some iteration of channel availability or power limitation of some sort. Until now, this meant that each country had to have it’s own regulatory SKU to prevent a wireless professional or other ‘non-professional’ installer from exceeding or violating that countries requirements. Cisco has worked around this particular issue with a universal SKU Access Point. In the past you would order a specific AP for a specific country. The astute Cisco-configurator would identify the country code in an AP model number (A for North America, N for Mexico, I for Egypt, etc.). The gory details of country code mapping changed occasionally which meant that it was almost a full time job for international companies to wrangle which SKU went where.

UX domain model of AP, last in the list.

Enter the ‘UX’ SKU of AP. These APs are designated by the country code ‘UX’ and are universal SKU APs, meaning one SKU can be installed in any country. The way we’re able to do this is by way of software defining which country the AP is operating in. Now, the FCC won’t just allow you to ‘claim’ a country code, so there are some specific restrictions to deploying a ‘world capable’ AP. Today, this means tying the AP to a specific user, then using a non-hacked device to determine GPS coordinates of where the AP is installed to ‘prime’ or ‘unlock’ the AP based on what country it’s physically located in.

This blog will review the two ways to ‘prime’ a UX domain AP and get you up and running in no time at all! The first thing you need is an un-compromised (not jailbroken) device with both online capabilities (an Internet connection) and GPS capabilities. Enter the smartphone. Most of todays smart phones meet this requirement:

Step 1) Head to your devices respective app store and grab the Cisco AirProvision application.

Don't ask me what the Android store looks like!

Cisco AirProvision in the Apple Store

Step 2) Plug in your AP and let it join to your WLC (this assumes you have things like discovery already taken care of). There are no UX specific join requirements so if you have regular Cisco APs joining your WLC, this part should be easy. Note that at this point the AP will be flashing ‘bad colors’ at you despite it’s radios being up and operational.

Unprimed AP

Step 3) Enable ‘Universal AP Admin’ on one of your secure (PSK or .1x) SSIDs that has internet access (WLAN tab -> WLAN ID -> Advanced tab -> ‘Universal AP Admin’).

Universal AP Admin

Step 4) Join the above SSID on your unprimed AP.

Step 5) Launch the app on your smartphone and log into CCO (page 1) then your WLC (page 2).

Step 6) Click Configure!

Configure!

That’s it! It’s a relatively straightforward way for your AP to know what country it’s at.

Primed AP!

The good news is that you only ever need to prime a single AP in this fashion. Once it’s primed and comes back online, it will automatically include in its Neighbor Discovery Packets (NDP) UX domain info. Any other unprimed AP in earshot of these discovery packets will hear them and automatically pickup the country code of the already primed AP! Once you have primed a second AP by way of the NDP the priming sticks with the AP and you can then prime others off it in a cascading fashion – you can even re-prime the AP that you previously primed with the app!

NDP Primed AP!

While this may seem like unnecessary work for those that are single country entities, those that have to operate in multiple country codes may find that simplified ordering is a lifesaver – assuming your installers have a smart phone and a free CCO account. This can also help if your company accidentally ordered several hundred of these and you don’t want to RMA them. Remember that the country code priming sticks with the AP across reboots, regardless of location (unless you re-launch the mobile app to reconcile your installation).

Things to remember:

Your smartphone must allow location access (it has to know where you’re at after all).
You must join the SSID on your unprimed AP. Joining on a different AP won’t help you any.
You have to have 2.4GHz enabled on your WLC and SSID – an unprimed AP operates in 2.4GHz only so you have to be able to see your SSID.
You must have the country code you’re provisioning enabled on the WLC (Thanks Andrew!).
Your SSID must have internet access to allow CCO to be accessible.
NDP priming only works on other NDP primed UX domain APs or app primed UX domain APs – not ‘regulatory domain APs’.
Did you screw something up? You can reset the UX domain AP by performing a ‘Clear All Config’ on the AP page in the GUI (along with all of it’s other settings)!
When your AP primes, it reboots. This is the same if you use the app or NDP. Don’t be surprised if you app-prime one AP and it cascades a bunch of NDP reboots.

*Oct 26 14:16:35.003: %CLEANAIR-6-STATE: Slot 0 enabled
*Oct 26 14:16:41.783: %CLEANAIR-6-STATE: Slot 1 enabled
*Oct 26 14:17:08.719: %CDP_PD-4-POWER_OK: Full power - NEGOTIATED inline power source Writing out the event log to flash:/event.log ...
*Oct 26 14:19:50.339:  **************************** UNIVERSAL AP PRIMING ***********************
*Oct 26 14:19:50.339:  Action completed: regulatory domain values 0x0 0xB are written. Now trigger AP reload
*Oct 26 14:19:50.507: %SYS-5-RELOAD: Reload requested by UAP DIE process. Reload Reason: UNIVERSAL AP PRIMING SUCCESSFUL .
*Oct 26 14:19:50.527: %LWAPP-5-CHANGED: CAPWAP changed state to DOWN
*Oct 26 14:19:50.727: %CLEANAIR-6-STATE: Slot 0 down
*Oct 26 14:19:50.727: %CLEANAIR-6-STATE: Slot 1 down Write of event.log done

You can see above the log from an AP that was previously online. This AP was unprimed when it powered up, came online with radios up and then after several minutes received the NDP prime message and auto-rebooted. Easy, but potentially disruptive!

Filed under Access Points, Cisco, FCC, Wireless, WLC

The evolution that will start the revolution

March 3, 2015 by scwifi 10 Comments

You’ve heard it all before, evolutionary technology versus revolutionary technology. Everyone wants their newest technology to be revolutionary – expecting it to be life changing and a wide-sweeping, compelling reason to spend tons of money. This is rarely the case and more often than not marketing fluff to try and get you onto the next big thing. Occasionally we get such an unassuming technology announcement that fits squarely in the ‘no big deal’ from a speeds and feeds perspective that it’s easy to overlook. This is clearly the case with the recent multigigabit announcements from Cisco during Cisco Live, Milan. Multigigabit is a technology that allows your existing cabling to support speeds in excess of 1G, without having to make the jump all the way to significantly more costly 10G. Since we already have technology that address speeds and feeds above what we’re talking about here (how many 10G uplinks have you deployed recently?), it’s easy to overlook the impact this will bring to our daily lives. The ability to move to 2.5G and 5G link speeds without having to make the jump all the way to 10G will allow us to get improved link speeds without having to pay a premium for them. The expected cost increase is estimated to be anywhere from 0% to 15% according to the rumor mill which makes the 250% to 500% speed bump quite attractive!

802.11ac wave 2
The reason I’m taking about it is the fact that this brings with it the promise of addressing the 1G bottleneck that people have been gnashing their teeth over in the wireless space for the past couple of years. While we’ve been able to reasonably deflect the speeds and feeds conversation with 802.11ac wave 1 (speeds approaching 1G wired requirements), there has been no good way to move past that without having a two-cable conversation. The assumption up till now has been that 2x 1G links will be the way forward and many people have been running two copper runs out to their Access Points for the past several years in anticipation of this approach. 802.11ac wave 2 will undoubtedly break the 1G barrier in fairly short order with speeds being promised of (best case) 6,930Mbps PHY rate (about 4,900Mbps on the wire). Multigigabit solutions will allow us to address these concerns without having to invest in 10G links. Better yet, it will allow us to address these concerns without having to consume two 1G ports on our switches. Regardless of the solution you choose (1x 10G or 2x 1G), the cost for deploying a single Multigigabit link supporting up to 5G will be less at scale.

Power
The other unassuming byproduct of this conversation is that Access Points require power to bring up all of those components. It will be nearly impossible to power up a 10G ethernet interface in an AP in the power budgets that we have today. By reducing the link speed requirements to 5G, we can save power at the edge device and still fit in modern negotiation. Multigigabit solutions today will provide PoE, PoE+, and UPoE to ensure that the wave 2 APs that we’re going to be hanging will have ample power for whatever they’re going to bring.

The Revolution
I predict that the incremental cost and intermediary speeds will allow us to start having conversations about the jump to 10G. Multigigabit solutions on Access Points, switch uplinks, and desktop and server nics will be the next big thing. Stackable solutions today promise backwards compatibility so you don’t have to rip and replace – just add a stack member and you’re good to go in that closet/IDF! Regardless of your future proofing plans, enabling faster wireless, or just ensuring that you’re not spending money after (can you believe it?) now legacy 1G infrastructure, make sure you’re having a conversation today about ethernet to bridge the gap to 10G.

For more information about the NBASE-T alliance, go here.
For the Cisco Live, Milan – Tech Field Day Extra event with Peter Jones, go here.

Filed under 802.11ac, Access Points, Cisco, Wireless, Wireless Tech Field Day

Drag racing the bus

July 8, 2014 by scwifi 2 Comments

Picture it. You’re a school district transportation engineer. You’re in charge of purchasing a fleet of new school busses for your district. The big ones. The expensive ones. The ones that will last you for the foreseeable future. So, you call up Bus Vendor A, B, and C and inform them that you’re in the process of selecting a fleet of new school busses. The following week each vendor dutifully delivers their ‘bus of choice’ to be evaluated. You then grab your intern, put him at the midway point of the bus from ‘Vendor A’ and take it for a spin! You see how fast it goes from 0 to 60. You see how it corners. People hear tires screeching from all over the city as you and your one other occupant sling this bad boy around town ‘evaluating’ the bus. You then repeat the same process for ‘Vendor B’ and ‘Vendor C’. You aggregate your data. You correlated your data. You make pie charts about your data. You do ROI calculations on your data. You do comfort analysis on your data. You do handling analysis on your data. You made your ‘educated’ recommendation and purchased a fleet.

Day 1 of school rolls around and the first thing your brand spanking new fleet of school busses does is immediately do the one thing you neglected to test: they loaded up with kids and trudged along at 20 MPH safely around town. You start getting complaints. They don’t stop well. They don’t handle well. They don’t get good gas mileage. They bounce all over the place and your district has to send 2,000 kids to chiropractic care because you didn’t evaluate the bus under the conditions it’s going to be used in. Instead, you took it for a joy ride. You drag raced it. The one bus that went the fastest with a single guy in it, you bought. When you deployed it, it broke because you didn’t test it using real world scenarios.

Please, don’t drag race your evaluation Access Points. Test them like you’re going to operate them. That way you get a realistic view of how they’re going to behave in the real world. Do your self a favor. Stop joy riding your vendors gear and put it in the real world to test it.

This blog inspiration courtesy of @florwj . Go follow him. He’s awesome.

-Sam

Filed under 802.11ac, Access Points, Aruba, Cisco, Wireless

MythBusters WiFi: Xirrus

February 18, 2014 by scwifi 8 Comments

I’ll be the first to admit that when I see something ‘out of the norm’ I shudder and have a knee-jerk reaction that is not always positive. There is so much success around the tried and true enterprise approach to wireless of using omni directional antennas that when you see someone intentionally deviate from it, it can be jarring to say the least! I’ve had the pleasure to be present at the Xirrus Wireless Field Day sessions for WFD5 and WFD6 and I can honestly say that they did a superb job of taking a contentious topic and addressing it head on. For those that are unfamiliar with the Xirrus product, their unique approach to wireless is to stack multiple Access Point radios into a single housing and use highly directional antennas to create an ‘Umbrella Corporation logo’ of coverage:

(it should be noted that I do not believe that Xirrus is somehow evil, involved in genetic engineering, or otherwise a bad company – the logo is simply an easy way to represent a high degree of directionality from a centralized point)

Adding multiple radios into a single housing is not a unique approach. Most everyone on the market starts with two radios in their Access Points and you can even find a handful of three-radio solutions, but Xirrus takes this approach to the next level by stacking as many as 16 radios into a single Access Point! The challenge that other manufacturers do not need to address is overlap. In a standard two or three-radio approach, you typically operate one radio in 2.4GHz and the other in 5GHz (and for those rare 3rd radio guys, they usually stick that radio in monitor or listen-only mode). Tack some omni directional antennas on those bad boys and you’ve got yourself an AP! Xirrus however, intends to have multiple radios in a single AP operate on in the same frequency. This presents some challenges about the efficiency you can gain from having more than one radio in the same frequency in the same physical package (AP). At WFD5, there was much gnashing of teeth regarding how you accomplish this in one package. I’ll not go over the gory details, the video is posted here. Xirrus came back to WFD6 and brought with them their Director of RF Engineering, Avi Hartenstein and tacked the conversation head on.

My goal was simple with this post. I wanted to prove that directionality does exist in the Xirrus product once and for all. I was able to acquire a 4 radio array and decided that the best approach to visualize this purported phenomenon was to actually survey with an AP in an area with no obstructions (scientific, no?). I took the array, statically assigned one of the radios to a fixed channel, turned its power down to -15dBm (yes, they go *that* low!), and took it outside. The results speak for themselves:

Ladies and gentlemen, you saw it here first (or maybe not) – the myth of the Xirrus wedge is real! You can see near the bottom of the image where the AP was placed (at random orientation). I peeled this wedge view out using Ekahau’s Site Survey application after quite a walk outside in the cold. This directionality is fairly easy to see even with my coarse sampling outside. It should be noted that it will be near impossible to visualize this dramatic of a wedge indoors however due to the prevalence of those pesky attenuators otherwise known as walls and furniture.

I’ve seen my fair share of wireless deployments, I know what I’m comfortable with, I know when I move outside of my comfort zone. An experience I reference often is an educational facility that was using directional patch antennas indoors on 10 ft ceilings pointed at the ground. While this is a startling design, when I dug deeper into their design methodology, I discovered that they surveyed using the exact model of antenna and AP that was deployed, correctly visualized the resultant zone of coverage, and validated that this met their applications need. While not a solution I would lead with, there was no fault with their design methodology or implementation, and the infrastructure operated as designed. When you tackle a Xirrus deployment, I would advocate the same approach: understand your needs (throughput, density, coverage, etc), and design to meet those needs using the gear you will be deploying. Survey what you deploy, deploy what you survey. In the Xirrus world, this presents a few design choices to consider:

1) Orientation of the AP.

The Xirrus array has a compass in it. Use this compass to determine the orientation of your array during the survey and ensure that when it gets deployed that this lines up correctly (use the logo on the housing if you need to).

2) Oversubscription.

You must pay close consideration to the number of uplinks to your array and balance this with your deployment expectations. Oversubscription is nothing new so don’t let this scare you – just be aware that you’re moving your uplinks (and potential bottlenecks) further up the line (closer to the AP). This is going to be particularly important as you consider updating your array to newer technologies such as 802.11ac.

3) Powering the Array

Ensure that you have made concessions for powering the array. This will likely require an external power injector but sourcing them along with the array should not be problematic.

4) Antennas change with the modules.

One of the most insightful things I learned from the WFD sessions are a reinforcement that the antenna is part of the radio module. When you replace that module, you replace the antennas that are a part of that module. This could potentially impact the RF of your deployment and will most assuredly change the visualization of your survey data.

Xirrus uses highly directional antennas in a unique way to extend the reach of a radio. This coupled with a low powered radio gives you a number of excellent design pieces for most any wifi environment or need. Pay close attention to the number of radios that you need, apply some logic and reason to your design (don’t expect 8 of your 16 radios to operate in 2.4GHz for example) and make sure your celling has sufficient mount points. The arrays can be weighty. 🙂

Filed under Access Points, Wireless, Xirrus

Meraki: The bolt on Cloud that wasn’t

January 15, 2014 by scwifi 5 Comments

When Cisco acquired Meraki last year, there was much confusion. Being ‘down in the trenches’ I struggled as much as the next guy trying to wrap my head around the acquisition and I believe I have a good handle on it. Others not so much. I regularly consult with customers that are just as confused today as they were last year. Cloud is such an over used buzz word and so many vendors are trying to jump on the buzzword bandwagon de jour that it’s easy to get lost admist the jargon and solutions, much less the technical merits or differences in the platforms. I’m here to offer some advice on the strategy and perhaps a perspective on the acquisition that you haven’t yet considered. First some advice:

Don’t purchase Meraki Access Points. You read that right. Don’t do it. Also, don’t purchase Meraki switches. For that matter, don’t buy the Meraki firewall either. If you purchase a Meraki Access Point, a Meraki switch, or a Meraki firewall, you’re not buying an Access Point, you’re not buying a switch, you’re not buying a firewall. You’re buying ‘The Cloud’. When you consider purchasing infrastructure equipment that is ‘Cloud Enabled’, this should be a purchase that lines up with your organizations Cloud Strategy first and foremost. Don’t have a Cloud Strategy? Don’t be so sure. There are a few questions to ask yourself before you jump to that conclusion. Does your organization use DropBox? Salesforce.com? Office 365? Webex or Goto Meeting? Google Mail? All of these are examples of Cloud Applications. If you use these, someone, somewhere in your organization has made the determination to embrace services from ‘The Cloud’. Understand this strategy. Understand what this enables. Understand what this means to your data and where your data lives. Then (and only then) should you consider purchasing ‘Cloud Managed Infrastructure devices’.

Let’s be frank about it, there’s nothing special about the hardware in a Meraki Access Point. There’s nothing special about the hardware in a Meraki Switch, nothing special about the hardware in a Meraki firewall. When you purchase Meraki equipment, this gear is purpose built to be Cloud Managed with features driven by that Cloud Management. When you make a Meraki purchase, purchase an end-to-end Cloud-enabled infrastructure. If it’s right for one component, it’s right for all of them. If it’s not right for all of them, it’s not right for any of them.

Now some perspective. Everyone is talking about Cloud. Everyone wants in on the Cloud action. Everyone is ‘bolting on’ Cloud to their existing products in some fashion or another. When Cisco purchased Meraki, they made a decision to not ‘bolt on’. They decided to pick the one organization that understood Cloud from bottom to top and embrace that strategy despite the fact that there was some hardware overlap. The Meraki acquisition wasn’t about Access Points, switches, or firewalls. It was about finding the one organization that was never built for ‘on premises’ management and this shines through in every aspect of their products. Others tout ‘free protocols’, ‘cloud provisioning’, or a variety of other nonsense but at the end of the day, these are bolt-on solutions that are all afterthoughts. I would encourage you to revisit the Meraki product portfolio but when you do, ask yourself the following questions:

What are my existing Cloud Applications?
How do I rely on ‘the Cloud’ today?
Do I want to leverage that existing strategy in my infrastructure?
Do I want a solution that is built from the ground up around ‘the Cloud’ with a no-compromises featureset or do I want to deal with someone bolting on features to their existing ‘heavy gear’?

Then go buy a Meraki AP.

Filed under Access Points, Cisco, Meraki, Wireless

Please stop asking for an 802.11ac site survey

November 6, 2013 by scwifi 1 Comment

You are likely reading this post at the recommendation of someone. You have likely asked something along the lines of ‘Will you do an 802.11ac site survey for me?”. This is an easy mistake to make, and I hope that this clarifies a few things for you. First and most importantly, any site survey should always start with the customer requirements, then you position the technology to fit those requirements. If you ask me for an 802.11ac survey, this means that you want a deployment that supports 802.11ac modulation. Modulation occurs at most areas of your cell and as you get further away from your Access Point, your speed decreases, but this does not mean that you don’t ‘get an 802.11ac data rates’. The 802.11ac specification allows for as low as 6.5Mb/s and as high as ‘gigabit wifi’ and all sorts of speeds in-between. With 802.11b/g/n it was possible to ask for ‘the best, and make it pervasive’ and you could theoretically design an environment to support the highest supported data rates in all locations. With 802.11ac, this is no longer possible due to the very strong signal strengths required and the very wide channels required to achieve ‘max throughput’. It is unreasonable to expect an enterprise wireless deployment to support 1300Mbps (or whatever your Access Points spec sheet claims as the max) in all locations for all clients.

If you ask for an 802.11ac site survey without any other clarifications, you can safely expect massive cell sizes and generally poor throughput which is likely not what you want. Examining your Access Points data sheet will give you some idea of the wide range of signal strengths required (not to mention channel widths) to support a variety of 802.11ac data rates. The Cisco AP3700 data sheet for example, shows that -61dBm is required to support VHT80, MCS 9, 3 spatial streams (the ‘highest 802.11ac’ supported on the Access Point at 1300Mbps) all the way down to -92dBm for VHT20, MCS 0, 1 spatial stream (the ‘lowest 802.11ac’ supported on the Access Point at 6.5Mbps). All of these qualify as ‘supporting 802.11ac’. This wide swing in capabilities is the reason that you cannot simply ask for ‘an 802.11ac site survey’. Instead, you should always start by gathering your requirements upfront:

What are my throughput requirements?*
What are my density requirements?*
What are my client types?*

Then turn those expectations into leveraging a technology for the deployment. If you do not set those expectations upfront, or have a good understanding of what your clients requirements are, how can you claim success? You need to mutually agree upon design requirements, then prove that design back in whatever fashion you agree on. Set expectations, design for those expectations, meet those expectations, then prove that you’ve met those expectations. And please, stop asking for an 802.11ac site survey.

* There are many things that go into a proper RF design, not to mention supporting other applications such as BYOD technologies that I’m intentionally glossing over. This is just a small sampling of some of the questions you can use to suss out your customer requirements and is by no means the only way of doing it.

Filed under 802.11ac, Access Points, Surveying

← Older posts

Newer posts →

SC-WiFi

Cisco Wave2 site survey how-to

All about DART

The Cloud giveth, the Cloud taketh away

10 reasons to take another look at 2015 Cisco Mobility

UX Domain APs

The evolution that will start the revolution

Drag racing the bus

MythBusters WiFi: Xirrus

Meraki: The bolt on Cloud that wasn’t

Please stop asking for an 802.11ac site survey

Categories

Recent Posts

Archives

Blogroll

Meta