Higher Education

Just reading around trying to find out what other schools are doing about these devices for the classrooms. We have some instructor interest in them, and all the posts about them I see are older, so I was hoping to see if anyone has gotten any of these devices working well.

 

We have Clearpass, Controller, Mobility Access Switches, and APs all from Aruba, so basically a full Aruba implementation. 

 

If you have them working well, do you have any info on setting one up your could provide? (we seem to prefer chromecast as a company) I understand Airgroups are generally an expectation with these devices.

 

We block intra-subnet communication, and our thought is we would want to make sure that only our Employee and IT subnets could access these devices. I have zero experience with any of these devices, but we are mostly looking for the 'screencast' ability. 

I've deployed networks with both and generally speaking the Chromecasts seems to be the perfect device due to it being cross-platform (works on almost every platform) and very inexpensive. For streaming online content, the bandwidth benefits are huge. Instead of streaming down to your device then spitting the same data back out to the TV, Google Cast initiates a "hand-off" to the chromecast so only the chromecast is streaming the media.

For screen mirroring, they both behave the same from a network standpoint.

The next Chromecast will be even better as it will be dual-band. The price point is expected to be the same ($35)

Will the next chromecast be 802.1x or still just psk?

Pola Swartz
Wireless Team Lead
Sr. Wireless Administrator
Department of Technology Services
Denver Public Schools
720-423-3603
I Proudly Play For Team DPS
[Description: DPS Logo]

Not a first, but they have added 802.1X support to the product roadmap. It would likely come in a software update.

Where can I find information on the roadmap Tim?

Thanks,
Pasquale

There is no formal public roadmap document unfortunately.

We have been wrestling with mirroring for a while and were very excited about the newest AppleTV with the latest software upgrade.  Now I see Chromecast is worth a closer look.

How to you ensure that students don't have access to the chromecast? 

 

Another of our concerns is that we set up a chrome cast and a student would take over the screen and put something inappropriate on screen. 

Using AirGroup registration in ClearPass, you can restrict who has access to the devices.

Is there any VRD or portion of the user manual that you would suggest I read to look into setting it up?

 

By the end of this month I should have a small test enviornment so I can start testing. 

Start on page 28 of the CPG manual.

 

 

 

http://support.arubanetworks.com/Documentation/tabid/77/DMXModule/512/Command/Core_Download/Method/attachment/Default.aspx?EntryId=14795

At this point, the VLAN is for faculty only. When this works the way it is supposed to, we'll need to address that.

We are experimenting with Chromecasts and like other consumer devices, wish they worked better in an educational environement.

 

Our controller is running 6.3.1.12. It is my understanding that 6.4 adds the architecture to make devices like Chromecasts work similarly to how AppleTVs work under 6.3, i.e., they are seen across VLANs and such things.

 

What we are currently trying is putting Chomecasts on an SSID with a PSK and assigning it to a VLAN based on its MAC address. This VLAN is the same one the client is on, which could be limiting for us if we want students to share their screen as students and teachers are on different VLANs. The clients are authenticated via 802.1x. While this works in general, we are having difficulty with the sceen casting option. Streaming from other apps works fine. When trying to cast the screen, it doesn't find the device, even though on the option to view devices they are listed. I've had a ticket open with TAC for a bit and they haven't been able to reproduce the issue. I talked with them yesterday and sent them backups, logs, etc. 

 

An Aruba engineer was able to reproduce the issue in his lab. And a test I did with an IAP senario running 6.3.x, worked fine for screen casting. My gut feeling is a certain type of broadcast traffic is being dropped. Hopefully, TAC will  figure out what the issue is soon as screen casting is a nice and wanted feature. 

rwilsonblue, I am wondering if TAC ever got back to you with an answer. I am having trouble discovering a Chromecast across vlans even though the googlecast service is enabled in Airgroup.

I had a case open with TAC on getting Chromecast working in our multi-vlan, ClearPass environment - I closed it because I didn't/couldn't get a tech that had set this up.  We have AirPlay working fine.  Chromecast is a way different setup.  You plug one in, connect to it over it's own little network to begin the config.  You nconnect it to your WPA2 network (which is a multi-vlan pool) it also sets your laptop, pda, etc. to the same WPA2 network and then you go off into la la land. the chromcast on one vlan and you on another and you never reconnect to finish the setup.  This is after the device is configured in ClearPass (properly) and the controller(s) are properly configured.

I solved it by setting up a "dumb" wpa2 network with a linksys WAP to match our enterprixe settings - i.e. same ssid same password to the WPA2 network. At this point you have a "one lan network".  Configure the Cromecast - cut the power and move it onto your production network - wa-la - it WORKS! 

Are you running 6.4 code? If so what version? We had to add to intially add a line manually via cli to get the service to run in house.

 

 

Also you need to make sure the vlans are allowed accross at the controller. You can do this by enabling it per standalone/local controller under the configuration tab>airgroup>airgroup settings>vlan table. You will also want to make sure all your airgroup services are enabled. 

 

You can also set this up multiple ways via CPPM, or the ssid your using to onboard. We have a seperate SSID that utilizes mac cacheing (MAB) for our consumer grade devices. This is also the same SSID for device registraion using a portal server and DNS redirects where we use the mactrac api to register them in the endpoints database. 

6.4.1.0

Yep the vlans are are there.

What service were you not able to get running?

What CLI command are you referencing? 

TAC hasn't responded with an answer. They asked for log files and such things. With that said, the problem I'm having isn't across VLANs. I'm trying to get the screen to cast on the same VLAN. We are on the 6.3 series.

 

 

---

@rwilsonblue wrote:

TAC hasn't responded with an answer. They asked for log files and such things. With that said, the problem I'm having isn't across VLANs. I'm trying to get the screen to cast on the same VLAN. We are on the 6.3 series.

 

 

---

rwilsonblue,

 

If you have 6.3, you need to turn of Airgroup and ensure that "Drop Broadcast and Multicast" on your virtual AP is unchecked.  6.4 provides official support for Chromecast devices.

Colin, that certainly was the fix for me to get iOS devices to work. The MacBook was able to work while still dropping bcast/mcast, but not the iPhone or iPad. Should I also enable DMO?

Los999,

 

When you say "get IOS devices to work", what do you mean?

 

Get ipads and iphones to discover a chromecast.

Los999,

 

Turning off Airgroup and make sure "drop broadcast and multicast" is disabled should work for all devices, provided that (1) you are not blocking any traffic between the chromecast and your users and (2) they are in the same layer2 VLAN as the chromecast device.

 

If you upgrade to 6.4 you get full support with Airgroup On and "drop broadcast and Multicast" enabled.