Controller Based WLANs

Product and Software: This article applies to all Aruba controllers and ArubaOS versions.

To check the availability and authenticity of the user in the user database of the external server, you can perform a simple AAA test from the controller to the RADIUS server.

When you look at the packet captures between the controller and the RADIUS server where you have requested for the AAA server, the following parameters are found:

• a calling station ID represented by (Calling Station ID(31). This parameter carries the MAC address of the controller, and it will always be all zeros, that is, 00:00:00:00:00:00.
• username and password the user for which you are testing for its existence in the external server.
  
  

In this case, focus on calling station ID which is (Calling Station ID(31) for MAC address of the controller 00:00:00:00:00:00. This value will always remain 0.

So, you might face problems or the AAA test server will never succeed if the RADIUS server is configured to respond only to request from a valid client that has a valid MAC address.

That Aruba controller acts as a client to the RADIUS server when you initially associate the controller with RADIUS server.

So, if you have configured a setting on the RADIUS server that says send a successful response only to requests from a client that has a valid MAC address, you must change it to default settings to make the AAA test server successful.