Greetings All,

I'm looking to purchase the Aruba 7210 wireless controller along with 30 AP-335 wireless APs and 8 AP-334 wireless APs for my organization.

I'm a little confused about the licensing though, so I'm hoping someone can help me out with this.

Do I need to purchase a license for each of the APs that I intend to connect to the controller?  If so, how do I determine exactly which license I need?  Do I also have to purchase a license for the controller itself?

For example:  I'm seeing item JW500AAE which is labeled as Aruba PEF VIA License for 7210 Controller E-LTU.  The cost on this is about $16,000.  Then I see JW472AAE Aruba Controller Per AP Capacity License E-LTU for $75.00 each.

So, basically, I'm getting really confused on exactly what I need to purchase to get this project rolling.  I would have thought that the APs would have come with a license (especially for the asking price of $1,600 or so per AP.)  But when I contacted the vendor, they said I needed to buy a license for each AP on top of the unit cost.  They also advised me that the licenses have to be bought again after a set period of time.

Any advice is very much appreciated!

Problem:  Need to have a switch in a remote area of my office that is not reachable by wiring.  (wireless signal is strong there)

Possible soultuion?

Is it possible for me to put a POE switch in that location and connect an IAP and mesh it into current Wireless Network and thus allow the switch to join the network?

We are having a debate at work on whether a particular configuration should be using a “Forward mode” of “bridge” or “tunnel” in the “Wired AP” profile used on the “Ethernet interface port configuration” applied to an Access Point.

Here’s the setup.  We are a large campus with many buildings.  A typical building has fiber coming in to a main switch.  The main switch is connected to child switches which could be connected to their own child switches and so on.  Access Points (APs) and other devices are connected to these switches and the different types of devices are partitioned into VLANs.  The Ethernet ports on the APs are always configured to “tunnel” forward mode.  Thus, traffic from an AP tunnels back to the Mobility controller while traffic from other devices on the same switch follows whatever paths have been established for it.  Hopefully this makes perfect sense.

Now consider a building, X, that does not have fiber coming in to it but which has a switch to support wired connections within the building, including APs, like any other building.  Building X is across the street from Building Y, which does have fiber and is setup as described in the previous paragraph.  In order to connect Building X to the network, we use Aruba mesh nodes to create a wireless bridge from Building X to Building Y.  In the abstract, you could view Building X as just another floor of Building Y, which connects to building Y’s main switch via a wireless bridge instead of a copper wire.

The wireless bridge is composed of a mesh “point” located at Building X, and a mesh “portal” located at Building Y.  Of course the “Mesh Cluster” profile is using encryption so that unencrypted traffic, like a telnet password for logging in to Building X’s switch, is not broadcast out on the public airwaves.  And of course the “Forward mode” of the “Wired AP” profile for the mesh point at Building X is set to “bridge,” since there is no controller to tunnel to in Building X.  Hopefully I am stating things clearly and have not lost the audience.

Here is where the disagreement comes in.  Should the “Forward mode” of the “Wired AP” profile for the mesh portal at Building Y be set to “bridge” or “tunnel?”  Before you answer, consider an ordinary AP located in Building X.  Like an AP in any other building, it will establish a tunnel back to the controller.  If the mesh portal in Building Y is also set up to tunnel, then the tunneled traffic from the AP in Building X will be placed inside a second tunnel created by the mesh portal.  Consider also an ordinary PC in Building X.  If the mesh portal in Building Y is set up to tunnel, then, unlike a PC in any other building, this PC’s traffic will be tunneled back to the Mobility controller by the mesh portal before it is released to be routed wherever it wants to go.  You have probably detected which side of the debate I fall on.

The argument in favor of “bridge” mode is that the only purpose of the wireless bridge (be careful, we are using the word “bridge” in different contexts here and it means slightly different things) is to emulate a copper connection between a child switch in Building X, and its parent switch in Building Y.  There is no extra trunking required, the switches are configured like they are in any other building.

The argument in favor of “tunnel” mode is unclear but there seems to be strong sentiment in favor of it.  Perhaps someone on this forum can offer some insight as to why tunnel mode should be preferred to bridge mode in this use case.  Perhaps there is some consideration that I have overlooked that would explain a preference for tunnel mode.

All commentary is welcome.  Anyone care to weigh in?

Hello,

I am creating an 802.11ac wave 2 wireless environment for a healthcare building. 5 floors, 325 devices per floor and using cisco voice phones. I am looking at Aruba wireless controllers and wondering the pros and cons to using a virtual wireless controller vs a physical one?

Any feedback would be appreciated. 

Need some suggestions: Should I go with Outdoor IAP or Outdoor MESH?

I am designing a outdoor MESH network for a food processing site with 3 plants. There is limited cable/fibre ran among the plants on site. So Wireless MESH is prefered and four access points are required (one will be wired in business office and three for the plants). Attached screenshot is for illustration purpose of the setup. The MAX distance between plant to business office OR each plant is 200 Meters. The MESH setup is only for connecting different plants not for wireless clients.

If I use the Outdoor IAP, I can save money of controller assuming Outdoor MESH AP needs controller; If I use the Outdoor MESH AP (such as MST200), then I got the benifit of built-in directional attenna. 

BTW, Can I use Aruba MeshConfig tool for managing/monitoring/troubleshoot MST200 without a controller? 

Suggestions?

/S

Is there a way to see on the controller or airwave the device name of an ipad, windows and android devices?

What i have done so far was enabling AMON and also create a custom view on airwave to see the LAN hostname

I can see a FEW devices name... but i mean out of 100 i just see like 25 or 20...

Iam missing configuration? or is not possible?

Cheers

CArlos

Hello, I'm trying to figure out what the difference is between configuring the ip address of an airwave server on my MM controller, vs. adding the ip of my controller to airwave. If I add the airwave ip to my controller, nothing seems to happen -- airwave doesn't pick it up. But the documentation is unclear about what to put for the snmp community string -- is this the community string on the airwave server that "pushes" data to airwave? Or is it pulled from airwave, and this should be the snmp community configured on the controller? Are there any logs showing what the controller is trying to do when you set the ip of the airwave server?

Thanks,

Mike

Hi we are curious which one to use for our customers:

- 6.4.2.6-4.1.1.13

- 6.4.2.6-4.1.3.1

Our customers use Client Match, Network printing, Cloud services, Google Cast and Apple TV.

Which one is better, or which one to choose? I don't understand both releases...

ps we use AMP 8.2.1

Thanks in advance. 

Hello, 

We are testing a desing created for distributed venues with Instant cluesters connected through VPN to a centralized authentication site for EAP auth and an Airwave. Apart from the authentication each site will have its own captive portal for guest wifi and also client wifi. 

The client is requesting to test different types of profiling with the instant clusters and we are testing them with a FreeRadius. We might be able to offer a ClearPass or a controller based remote sites solution but for pricing purposes we would try to get as much as possible without them. 

Could anyone please confirm if we can do any of these with freeradius and instant, or if not if we should add a controller and/or a ClearPass:

- Configure a time limit interval for guests for each day

- Configure a maximum of simultaneous logins with the same user / pass

- Cache the MAC of an authenticated user so it doesnt have to login again. Please explain if its possible to set this cache time (i.e 1 day, 1 week, etc)

- Assign dynamic bandwidth to an SSID or a user. If the other is free take all the BW, if not stick to the max BW. 

- Assign dynamic bandwidth to an application. Same as before but for example specify a maximum of 1mb per user for Facebook, but if the system is free of traffic assign all the 10mbps as EIR. 

Thanks in advance!

Design question. I have 5 to 6 IAPs in a location. I suspect 2.4 co-channel interference is causing issues or will cause issues. Is it better to stagger the broadcasting of the 2.4 radio accross every other IAP or better to turn down the TX power rating? 

If assigning a lower TX setting, does that take the IAP out of ARM? 

If staggering is a better solution, how can i disable the 2.4 radio on certain IAPs? Do I need to convert the 2.4 radio into a monitor or spectrum monitor or will that still cause interferrence?