Controllerless Networks

In the past the biggest roadblock that I've heard from the Aruba side of things has been that AP- units are sold without any built-in domain power restrictions to keep the hardware compliant with the local radio laws.  Therefore the conversion to IAP was impossible because the unit wouldn't know what power domain it should operate under, and therefore wouldn't operate at all.  (all my paraphrasing, but seems to be the commonly repeated line when someone asks why)

With InstantOS 8.3 we now have the ability to load DRT files into the virtual controller (under the maintenance window, just a couple of tabs over from the firmware upgrade).  Given this new possibility of in-the-field programming of new radio power domains, are there any plans to allow those of us with AP- units acting as paperweights (we can't use them without a controller) to be able to flash an IAP- firmware & then load the necessary DRT to convert an AP- unit into an IAP- unit?

I literally have a few boxes full of AP- units that are new or almost-new but cannot be used because we don't have a controller.  They've been around too long for any kind of return/exchange (we got them in a company acquisition) and are literally just paperweights to me right now.  But I do use Aruba IAP-s and would love to be able to convert & deploy these units (switching the acquired company's existing wifi system up to an Aruba system to match the rest of our properties).

To me, the worst case is that I waste a little bit of time.  The units are already worthless, so they can't become any less valuable.  But if the conversion were available (even at a risk of perm failure) I'd try just for the chance to get some value out of these units...

No, conversion of "traditional" controller-based APs to Instant APs will never be allowed/supported. There are serious regulatory issues with enabling that.

However, for some time now, Aruba has been releasing "unified" APs, which support both controller-based and Instant deployments.

Those SKUs can be recognized as "AP-xxx-yy", where the traditional controller-based APs were "AP-xxx". The -yy suffix indicates the regulatory restrictions of the particular SKU, when used without a controller.

The current list of unified AP SKUs is: AP-203H-yy, AP-203R(P)-yy, AP-303H-yy, AP-303-yy, AP-34x-yy, AP-36x-yy, AP-318-yy and AP-37x-yy. All future AP models will be unified as well.

Hope that helps.

Thanks Onno.

Our boxes-o-paperweight are full of AP-225 and AP-325, so I guess I'll have to order some new IAP-s to do what I want.

But it's good to know.