Controller-less WLANs

Environment Information- This article applies all Instant clusters running any version of Aruba InstantOS.

Symptoms- As the name says, the Cloud activation key is bothered only to them who manage instant access points via Aruba Central. Below are the points or symptoms, that one could see:

# Virtual Controller in the network is unable to register itself to Activate

# Clock on the access points shows dated back to default i.e 1970  or  shows incorrect information

# Unable to Ping to domain names, but able to ping public IP addresses from access point.

Cause- Below are major causes for absence of cloud activation key in an IAP cluster:

1. IAPs would have obtained IP addresses from DHCP server on the network. The dhcp offer might not allocating DNS server addresses to IAPs.
2. Due to the absence of DNS server config in IP address settings, they will not be able to reach activate server, which is reachable at"device.arubanetworks.com"
3. Similarly, IAP will not ble able to talk to the default configured IP NTP server, which is reachable at "ntp.pool.org"

Resolution- As the resolution goes without saying, the instant access points in the clusters should have a correct configuration of DNS servers. This should have offered to them in the DHCP offer from the DHCP servers.

It is necessary to have a set of two DNS addresses, to maintain the redundancy of the reachability to DNS server.  This helps IAPs to have connected to activate and aruba central servers, to keep posting their activate date. Therefore, the IAPs can show UP on the central or remote management, which is main objective of cloud access.