Network Management

Hello,

We are running into an issue where some of our Aruba 61 AP's will appear up in Airwave, but is not actually transmitting the networks.

I have noticed that when an AP is behaving like this I see a lot of "rebootstrapping" error messages in the logs, there are no clients connected, and if the AP is in VisualRF, there is no heat generated from that AP. 

Unfortunately, not all of our AP's are in VisualRF, and a device can have several rebootstrapping events and still be functional. So what I am trying to do is find out what commands Airwave uses to generate the heat map, and then I can run those against AP's that I feel are not working to see if they are transmitting as they should. Or if there is a better way to find this out either through Airwave or on the controllers I am open to that as well.

Thank you in Advance

Anthony Pisano

Hi

Download and find answers on your question in the following PDF. (how visualrf working)

Link - PDF1

Link - PDF2

rgarding those AP that dosent work. - in order for u to understand the commands that the AirWave is sending - u should request an API command list between AirWave to visualrf.

you aware that u can check in other method the reason that your ap are conncted to your controller but arent tranmisting - lets start :)

• please screenshot your ap installison page in your controller. (under configuartion)
  
• also - what is your Aruba OS version?
  
• are u using POE or AC adapters on thoese ap.
  

have a lovely evening

After reading those PDF's I fear there won't be a single command I can use to see if a device is actually transmitting since it looks like VisualRF builds the map based on RF readings against neighbors and clients.

I have created a trigger to alert me to any device that has not had any client associations for 72 hours which at least gives me a list of AP's which may be having a problem. I am hoping to definitively know if an AP is transmitting or not instead of just rebooting it.

I am not able to post a screenshot of the AP Installation Page, but it is just listing Names, IP, MAC, Serial, etc. If there is something specific you need to see, I may be able to relay that.

We are running ArubaOS 6.1.3.3 using Aruba 6000 controllers. Our AMP server is 7.3.5

We have a mix of AP models, but only the 61 seems to have this issue where they will be "rebootstrapping" and then stop responding

All of our AP's are using POE.

Thank You 

Anthony

I noticed that you said you're running AMP 7.3.5 (is that a typo?).  Our latest release is 7.6.2 (that's a 2-step upgrade from your current version).  You may find that 7.6.2 has some helpful bug fixes, new report definitions and widgets, and some more customizable fields which may help you in finding the right alert.

Hi,

my first advise,Try to upgrade your controller to 6.1.3.6

(and also upgrade your AirWave to lastest version 7.6.2 like the above post advising :smileyhappy: )

Look on the bug report on the 6.1.3.6 release notes: ( I also added for u as a PDF to this post)

Bug 65984
Symptom: Random AP rebootstrapping was observed along with poor WLAN performance and a
ping issue. This issue is resolved in ArubaOS 6.1.3.6.
Scenario: When a controller configured as default gateway in Layer-2 network responded to a
large number of ARP requests, AP rebootstrapping due to high CPU utilization was observed. This
issue occurred on controllers running ArubaOS 6.1.3.1 or earlier.

2nd question - do u see any flags that aren't normal on the AP installations page? (any L or i on any AP)

regards.

Me

Attachment(s)

ArubaOS 6 1 3 6 Release Notes.pdf   869 KB 1 version

Re AMP Version: Unfortunately it is not a typo, there are some political issues not allowing me to upgrade at this time.

Re ArubaOS Version: We are in the process of planning the test of the newest version of ArubaOS. I do not believe our controllers are acting as gateways though because in the intial design they did not want there to be too much traffic between controllers when people roamed. But I will point out that bug to the team.

Re Flags: No flags except for a few 'o' flags

If you are getting rebootstraps I would go down this route;

When you next get an AP in this situation I would issue the following command from the controller CLI;

'show ap tech-support ap-name <name>"

I'd wait a minute and issue the command again.

The I would raise a ticket with TAC. (TAC will also want the output of 'tar logs tech-support')

With this output we can see the reboot reason, number of reboots, we can even see if the AP is transmittitng beacons i.e. operational.

included in 'show ap tech'

'show ap debug system-status'

This will show last rebootstrap reason and memory status etc

'show ap debug radio-stats radio 0/1'

This will show the RF enviroment, and number of packet transmitted received etc.

I don't think AMP version has anything to do with this issue.

I will do this next one I run across.

After I gather this information is it OK if I reboot the AP to get it working, or should we call TAC with it in a failed state?

I'm not sure if this will apply in your situation, but I too hove wondered more than once how to tell if my access points were transmitting. (In some cases we have an AP, a pigtail, a longer jumper, a lightning arrestor, and an antenna lined up, and it's easy to suspect that something isn't tight, or might have failed)

Then I had a contractor loose his as-builts for a remote site and make up replacements for me. Turns out he just wrote some stuff down to appease me and got very little right in the list.

I called a local to that site and had him connect to the wireless and looked for him in Airwave/VisualRF then assumed that the nearest AP was the one he'd authenticated to and began looking at which neighbors it reported and how loud they appeared.

I rearranged the access points on the map - moving louoder ones closer and quieter ones further away.
Took quite a while and lots of trial and error but I now have a fairly accurate map (no thanks to my former contractor)

The application to your question is that when I wonder about an AP transmitting, I go to one of its neighbors and look to see if it can hear the AP in question, and it the dB level seems right. We have found a weather-worn cable that way, so it seems to work.

HELLO,

how does airwave visual rf do the heatmap of aruba ap 377 or 360or 367 series ?

Thank you in Advance

---

@anthonypisano wrote:

Hello,

We are running into an issue where some of our Aruba 61 AP's will appear up in Airwave, but is not actually transmitting the networks.

I have noticed that when an AP is behaving like this I see a lot of "rebootstrapping" error messages in the logs, there are no clients connected, and if the AP is in VisualRF, there is no heat generated from that AP. 

 

Unfortunately, not all of our AP's are in VisualRF, and a device can have several rebootstrapping events and still be functional. So what I am trying to do is find out what commands Airwave uses to generate the heat map, and then I can run those against AP's that I feel are not working to see if they are transmitting as they should. Or if there is a better way to find this out either through Airwave or on the controllers I am open to that as well.

Thank you in Advance

Anthony Pisano

---

Heatmaps are calculated based on:

1) device radio capability

2) signal relationships to surrounding devices

  a) ap to ap neighbor

  b) lack of ap to ap neighbor (at what distance/signal strength/tx power does an ap not hear a neighbor)

3) grid sizing of the floor plan (calculation area vs allocation of resources to perform calculations)

VRF doesn't actually send any commands to the controller, as the data comes through periodic polling.  With AMON yielding a better rate of data to trigger recalculation efforts than SNMP - based on sample requirements on VRF Setup for recalc.  Typically leave the VRF Setup calculation toggles at default unless you're trying to fine tune the calculation rates.