Higher Education

Hello, this information was originally in another thread but a Mod suggested creating a new thread.

Lately students on campus have occasionally been seeking support for not being able to connect to wireless at all.

Initial problem and observations:

- Wireless notifies of Limited connection

- Cannot resolve host

- Cannot reach Captive Portal either by redirection or navigation directly to the CP URL

Symptoms:

- Brand new HP laptop running Windows 8.1

- I disabled all anti-virus/firewall software

- Laptop is set as DHCP

- Laptop displays valid IP Address, Subnet Mask, and Default Gateway

- Laptop's ipconfig displays an IP address that is already assigned to another device in another building

- I have been unable to force an IP change on the laptop

- Laptop cannot access Captive Portal directly or by redirect

Can anyone shed some light on this? 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

ldjamison,

What version of ArubaOS is in use?

What wireless card is in the Windows 8.1 computer and what is the driver date?

What kind of controller, how many access points and what model of access points?

How many SSIDs do you have an what is the encryption on them?

How are your access points deployed?  (office space, etc)

If this is a critical issue, you should also open up a support case in parallel (support@arubanetworks.com) so you can get personalized service.

1. 6.4.2.2

2. I don't have the student's laptop on hand, but I have ran across the same problem with Windows 7 and Macbooks on the same day.

3. Aruba6000 Mobility Controller, 268 access points, and our access points are a combination of AP-93H, AP-105, AP-224, and AP-225.

4. Our network has 9 SSIDs but only 1 for student use (which is this case). The student use SSID is unencrypted.

5. Our access points are deployed to maximize coverage so they are installed in low coverage zones (I imagine that's what you meant). In each individual location they are usually installed either on the ceiling tiles or occasionally in student dorm rooms.

I will certainly look into opening a support case.

Thank you for your assistance.

To be clear, you have 9 SSIDs on each access point?

On your controller's dashboard, what does the channel busy, and Interference portions of your dashboard look like for access points?

I apologize, I misunderstood the question. There is only 1 SSID on the affected network in question.

Here is a screenshot of that portion of the Dashboard:

Thank you for spending time on my problem.

Okay that does not look especially bad (the few areas where the APS where the channel utilization is 50% or more might warrant a second look).  Instead of me running down a list of everything that could be happening, please take a look at the page here http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Technology-Blog/Removing-the-Bottleneck-in-Wireless/ba-p/77978 and see if anything helps.

If you are able to catch the problem occuring, can you look to see if the are in the user table?
I had an issue with similar symptoms;  the devices were associated, limited connection, I could see them associated to an AP in the controller but they were not in the user table.  (they would eventually get into the table after a wait of 5-15 minutes)
Or for the problem users are they permanently not able to connect, ever?

MattV, I will probably sound foolish but how do I locate the user table?

Hi,

You need to log into the command line of the controller.
(log onto the one with the problem device.)

You also need to know 
1) the client wireless mac address

2) the username of the client (or the ip)



show ap association client-mac (client-mac)

-- output will show you the AP the client is associated on

show user name (the username for that device)

-- output will show you all mac-address+IP combination that username is assocaited with
-- Is the above client-mac address listed?

If the usertable is populated correctly, it won't be the issue I had.

~Matt

I'll also add, the problem would happen for me to both users on the captive portal and on our 802.1x SSID.  But the source of the issue for me was identified as the captive portal process.

Alright, so I do have an update. I had enabled "enforce DHCP" before when it was suggested and from what I'm noticing it appears that enabling that option fixed the problems for the PCs (from what I can test). Now it appears that the problem remains only for Macs where Captive Portal never seems to load.

This might be an Apple CNA (Captive Network Assistant) issue. You could either allow the appropriate Apple CNA servers in the pre-auth role so that iOS device present the popup instead of the browser.

Or you could use the Bypass Apple Captive Network Assistant toggle in the captive portal role. Not sure when this feature started but we're using it with 6.3. When enabled, the device will authenticate to captive portal through the web browser, not Apple's CNA.

aaa authentication captive-portal "your-cp-profile"
   apple-cna-bypass

Mike

I am very pleased to say the problem has been solved via the "Enforce DHCP" option! It appears that one simple checkbox under our Captive Portal profile was the culprit for both PCs and Macs. Two hours after I enabled the option and applied the settings, one of the students (PC) who was having the issue stopped by to let me know it was working for her. I emailed one of the students with a Macbook the next morning who reported the issue and she said that her connection was fixed. There was also a graduate assistant in our department who was having a problem with her Macbook also but when I had checked hers she was still unable to connect.  Hers was fixed by opening up Network Preferences and deleting her wifi connection from the list then re-adding it which instantly worked. Thank you all so much for the help! I, and I'm sure every student on campus, thank you for the assistance in solving this!

I'll post my findings on Thursday. Our primary wireless tech is out sick. Since I'm assuming I need to be able to access the enable or configure account to follow those steps, I don't have access to those so I have to wait for her.