Controllerless Networks

Good day fellow Airheads.

The question may have been asked before, so please redirect me to the right thread if I'm not the first.

My client has a network made up of Large and small sites and we use Mobilty controllers on the lager sites and iAP clusters on smaller sites (<9 Access points).

We have now started buying iAP315's to deploy as iAP clusters, but as soon as we upgrade the device to a newer firmware (we must to get our country code - ZA) the instant devices resolves Aruba-master on our network and connects to the master controller. We do not want this to happen.

Aruba TAC's solution is to start the iAP up in a network unable to reach our Aruba-Master and load the firmware twice, configure the device and deploy, but that defeats the object for me as I have a deployment of about 40 clusters that we need to complete.

Is there any other way of doing this?

Maybe this one helps a bit:

http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Technology-Blog/Aruba-Unified-AP-platform/ba-p/295661

If it is possible to separate subnets for IAPs and controller-based APs, you could disable DHCP option 43 on the IAP subnet so that the IAPs never land up on a controller.

Another option can be a staggered deployment, where DHCP options are configured only after all the IAPs are up and running.

Yet another option is to configure an AP deployment policy on the controller (AOS 6.5.3.0+) where you can configure IP address ranges on the controller. If APs in these IP ranges contact the controller, they are rejected and instead redirected to the controller-less discovery process. More details can be found in the ArubaOS user guide, under the "AP Discovery Logic" section (Pg 516).

https://support.arubanetworks.com/Documentation/tabid/77/DMXModule/512/Default.aspx?EntryId=26228

Thank you sir, I like the third option as my master controller is discoverable via DNS.

I will LAB it and accept as solution if it works.

Hi guys,

Please two more questions about this:

1. Does this work for IAP-315 as Albie says? Because the ArubaOS 6.5.4.x says this only works for platforms 203H, 203R/203RP, 303H and AP-365/AP-367:

2. If so, does this mean if I connect a IAP-315 with factory default running 6.5.2.0 or higher, it will find the master controller via DHCP option 43 or DNS?

Regards,

Julián

Hi Albie and guys,

I have check the boot process on my IAP-315 factory default running version 6.5.4.3, and it seems it is not a UAP platform and then ADP doesn't take place:

election 5-0, rand 16
10.136.10.235 255.255.255.0 10.136.10.1
Non-UAP platform skip adp.
No v6 controller found, roll back to v4-only

Is there a way to enable it in order to connect to the controller?

Attached the complete boot process.

Regards,

Julián