Controller Based WLANs

How to verify if 802.11k is enabled on a particular wireless client on Aruba Controller?

Industry standard protocols like 802.11k reduce the time needed for a device to roam from one wireless Access Point to another. Aruba controllers manages the beacon reports generated from the clients and based on the same can help the clients to roam or connect to the best AP (this is based on current environment conditions and most of the time is dependent on the client to connect to the new AP).

On Aruba Controller we have a feature to check if a particular client is 802.11k capable. This can be verified through the web interface of the controller. Navigate in web interface of the controller as shown below:

Monitoring > Clients > Check on the Radio button specific to the wireless client we are checking > click on 802.11k report.

If a client supports 802.11k, after following the above steps, you will see a beacon report as shown below:

If a client doesn’t support 802.11k, the output of the above steps will show “Client is not 802.11k enabled”. See below output:

Note: Please make a note that the above will work only if we have 802.11k enabled i.e. if the APs are advertising 802.11k capability. You can check the same by navigating to Configuration > AP-Configuration > Virtual AP profile > Edit the Virtual AP profile > Click on 802.11k profile and confirm “Advertise 802.11k Capability” is checked.

Navigate to web interface of the controller: Configuration > AP-Configuration > Virtual AP profile > Edit the Virtual AP profile > Click on 802.11k profile and confirm “Advertise 802.11k Capability” is checked.

From this we can verify if any wireless client connected on Aruba Controller supports 802.11k.