Wireless Access

Hi,

We have two controllers supporting our RAP's.

Last night, we changed Internet providers which required changing the public IP addresses of our RAP controllers.

Prior to doing this, we added the controllers new IP address to the "backup-lms-ip" filed of the ap-system-profile assigned to the RAPs.

We tested this a few weeks ago and it appeared to work correctly.

Last night, when we did the cutover, the RAP's will not connect to the controller with it's new IP address.  We do not see them trying to contact the controller in the logs either.

We re-provisioned one RAP, and it connects successfully so we know our Infrastructure (routers/firewalls) are configured correctly.

We are now having to manually re-provision the RAPs.  I'd like to understand why this didn't work and why it did work in testing, is there something else we needed to do apart from adding the new IP to the backup-lms-ip ?

Thanks

Hi

Did you copy the RAP whitelist over to the new controller?

When you provision a RAP, the controller automatically enters the RAP MAC in the whitelist.

Changing controllers will not bring the whitelist along and all the RAP's will not be allowed to connect.

Roar Fossen

Hi,

Thanks for your response.

We didn't change the controllers, we just changed the IP address on the controller.

If we manually re-provision the RAP's and point them to the new IP address, they come up fine.

Regards,

Lee

Hi

Ahh, my bad. Controller IP change is something completely different than controller change.

Backup LMS should have worked yes, but DNS would be even more practical.

Roar Fossen

How would you use DNS if you had multiple clusters of RAP controllers at different locations around the world ?

GeoDNS.

Also you can change "Master Controller IP Address/DNS name" in provision AP profile in Wireless > AP Installation > Provision

It sounds as though you changed the LMS, but that is not the only change you need to make.  The RAPs initial provisioning is against an IP or DNS name.   If that goes away, the RAPs may be come stranded, which it sounds like may have happened.  If you initially provisioned the RAPs to a DNS name, change the IP associated with that host in DNS.  If you provisioned by IP, you may have to reprovision them all.  

If you have to reprovision them, I'd suggest you do so to a DNS name, not an IP to avoid future troubles.

See Appendix C of the RAP VRD regarding geographical redundancy setup.  http://www.arubanetworks.com/vrd/RAPVRD/AppC.html.  It explains how you can use DNS for the master controller/discovery/provisioning and then use LMS IPs for termination.

Hi Clembo,

thaks for the response.  The strange thing for us is that we tested this a few weeks ago and it worked by just add the new controller IP to the backup-lms-ip.  I guess there was a flaw in our testing so I'm taking a look at that.

Just so that I understand what we should have done, without DNS,  are you saying that prior to the cut we should have re-provisioned each RAP from the controller "AP Installation" menu and entered the new Master controller's IP address in there ?

Thanks,

Lee

That is one method of doing it; or you can create a provisioning profile that is applied to the RAPs to change it (assuming they are online).

Hello Chris ,

we have problem in failover between two wan links on RAP109,

we are using 3G dongle and Ethernet link, if you disconnected the Ethernet physically, the RAP goes to the 3G dongle and connects fine.

BUT if you disconnect the WAN service on the Ethernet, the failover to 3G will not be completed ,despite we raised the preemption timer .

The only solution is to cold reboot the RAP .

Please advice.