Controllerless Networks

Hi all,

First off, I am in the process of getting TAC and opening a case, but thought I'd throw this out and see if anyone has seen the same thing and maybe it'll even help someone. My setup has 3 IAP 105s, all attached to the same switch. The switch is unmanaged, and all of my WLANs are on the same (default) vLAN. I have a guest network, and a network exclusively for our old PocketPCs, both of those networks were set to deny Airgroup Access. All my IOS devices are on my main network, we are running an ordering system during a trade show and it is busy. For the first three days, with Airgroup and airprint enabled, printing worked well with few issues. Today, on one of my APs, IOS devices couldn't see printers. Roam back to either of the other two APs, printers come back. All other network services seem to be working just fine, I can see all LAN devices when browsing via that AP, I can get to internet, ping my gateway etc. I decided to turn off Airgroup for a few seconds and reenable it just to see if it would help. While it was off, I noticed that things started working fine again. Keeping and eye on it for now, but printing seems to be working even better than before.

One further piece of info, I am using a Lantronix xPrintserver to share out the printers, as the Airprint printers seem to have trouble with a large volume of printing and the print server smooths things out. The xPrintserver shows up as an airprint device in Airgroup. Also, I have similar setups for multiple clients, that's why I would like some insight on the issue, I don't want to turn it off at all clients based on this single observation unless it is confirmed that this is a valid config. Anyone seen anything similar?

We're seeing similar behavior (I think) --

ArubaOS 6.3.0.0 with Airgroup enabled, on a port tagged in all of our VLANs, AP-105s, and a Mac 10.8 print server in vlan 1 with wireless clients in vlan 2.

On a client machine of any sort (iOS, Mac OS X, Windows 7 tested), the printers will appear briefly and be "addable" as expected (e.g., seen in Bonjour printer list as "printername @ printserver (Bonjour Shared)" and when selected, the right driver and options are picked; but a few minutes later, the shared printer vanishes from the Bonjour list altogether, OR it still appears, but when selected, times out and can't determine the driver, and won't actually print even if you choose the driver manually.

Still trying to confirm the behavior so I haven't opened a support case yet. 

-- MB

Any updates on this? We're seeing similar issues. We have two AirPrint printers and they show up briefly then disappear after 20-30 minutes. The only thing that works is to reboot the printer.

The issue only arises after upgrading the controller's OS to anything above 6.1.3.2-airgroup. We're currently at 6.4.

I've got a case with Aruba but just wondered if anyone has solved this issue.

Thanks.

Can you try turning Active Wireless Discovery on?

Hi, Active Discovery is already on.

we are seeing similar results since we upgraded to 6.3.1.6.

Did you ever get resolution on this??

Seeing similar experiences on 6.3.1.10 with not just Native Airprint printers, but with Printopia hosted Airprint printers.    Restarting Printopia or printer get's us the 20-30 minutes of reliable access, then it dies again.

No registration required, not seeing this with AirDisplay devices, just printers.

After hours spent on phone support and weeks of packet tracing, mDNS research and more misery than I can describe I ran across this thread. 

Long story short, as soon as we disabled Airgroup status, our shared printers showed up on our IOS devices, stayed there and were functional.

What was maddening is the fact that the printers would show up fine on the OSX devices but vanish on the IOS devices and require a restart on the print server (Mac mini with he serevr app), reappear and vanish again in 15 minutes.

We're using 6.3.1.7 without Clearpass  - wondering if CPPM would be the missing link in this situation.

Either way, thanks to whoever figured this out!

I'll be enlightening my TAC and have him close out the ticket.

I believe this may have been fixed in newer versions, in version 6.4.2.6-1.1.1.11_52666

, if you go into the advanced options of the SSID, disable Broadcast filtering, Then go into More, Services,  Air Print, Air Play, are enabled, then enable Air group across mobility domains are all checked. 

Enable Bonjour to print aross VLANs (according to the engineer I talked to).

I'm using a Lantronix print server and this fixed my problem.

@gbowden

Thanks, these settings worked perfectly on version 6.4.2.6-1.1.1.11_52666.

I am running 6.4.3.1-4.2.0.2_52056 and had the Airgroup setting as described.  The issue I am seeing is that the users can see multiple printers when connected to most of the Access Points but when connected to 1 AP (sometimes 1 or 2 different APs)  they can not see any of printers.  I changed  the Broadcast setting to disabled and it did not make a difference.   I rebooted the AP and a few minutes later all 3 printers where then available.  

Seeing similar Behaviour with 6.4.2.6-4.1.3.0_54915.

Two issues that I see. The first is that one access point sometimes stops advertising bonjour services. If connected to that access point, any printers that are setup via bonjour will not work, the print job will remain in the queue. (If added via LPD by IP address, they work fine) 

The second issue is that two particular printers, will dissapear after 30 minutes or so and will not work if trying to print via bonjour. If added via IP , you are able to print to these printers. Is there something non standard about they way these printers are handling mdns?

I have Broadcast Filtering set to "all", and I plan to test with this set to disabled as previously suggested. Does anyone have any suggestions further to this, did others get this problem resolved? AP's are Aruba Instant 215's.

As an update to my last post:

I've updated all of my AP's to 6.4.4.8-4.2.4.3_56707 and the issues I described have been resolved.

Although this version of code is considered early release, I would recommend it, it seems to have resolved a number of issues with Airgroup.