It needs to be in a format that the Access Ports expects to receive. Ultimately you need to check the Motorola manuals for the exact format. I believe (from the post and memory) that the DHCP option 189 needs to be a string with the IP address inside. With some DHCP implementations you might need to enclosure the string in quotation marks, you’ll need to experiment to know for sure.

The reason it’s a string is that I believe you can provide multiple IP addresses in the following format, “192.168.1.10,192.168.1.11”. If you have a switch cluster with multiple RFS6000 switches your Access Ports will be able to find the standby/redundant RFS6000 Wireless LAN switch.

Ultimately it’s pretty easy to test with but if you look at the RFS7000/6000 reference manual it’s probably documented in there.

Good Luck!

Thanks Michael!

No, these will not be deployed in a single Layer 2 network — it will be on a Layer 3. And we are using the new Motorola 6511s and 6532s (in case you were interested…).

I now have a new question for you! In the link you supplied, you have one option:

option nortel-2245 code 151 = ip-address;

Why would we make option 189 be a string and not an ip-address?

Also, would you be able to explain a little to me on what DHCP option 192 does? I’ve been told that 192 is used to tell APs that a controller exists, and that 189 is used to supply IP address of the controller. If that is true, how would I format option 192?

Thanks again!

Hi Max,

As you know (from reading the article above) you can use either DNS or DHCP to help the Access Port find the RFS6000 Wireless LAN Switch. Are you deploying these in a single Layer 2 network? If so there’s no need for the DNS or DHCP option as the Access Ports will find the RFS6000 via a Layer 2 broadcast.

Your question is more around how do I properly configure ISC DHCP for option 189… you can have a look at this post I did a while back for the Nortel/Avaya IP phones.

http://blog.michaelfmcnamara.com/2011/02/isc-dhcp-configuration-for-avaya-ip-phones/

It should provide you a basic framework… just replace “option nortel-callserver code 128 = string;” with “option rfs6000 code 189 = string;”. Then in the shared-network stanza add “option rfs6000 “192.168.1.10”;” where 192.168.1.10 is the IP address of your RFS6000 controller.

If you run the ISC DHCP daemon in debug mode you might find that the Access Port identifies itself with a specific vendor class which you can use to help setup a range (another shared-network configuration block) so that only Access Ports get the option 189 instead of giving that option to every DHCP device.

Good Luck!

This is now the second time I’ve been directed to your blog in one of my Google searches. And you helped me out last time.

We are moving our WLAN to Motorola and we will be using the RFS6000 as our controller. The reseller mentioned that we will need to use DHCP options 189 and 192 to tell the APs how to get to the controller since we want to be able to take an AP out of the box, plug it into the network and have it configure itself.

We have a fairly old version (at least I think it’s old…) of DHCP running on SuSe 10. How can I tell if it iwll support options 189 and 192? Also, if it does support these two options, how would I go about implementing them? Upgrading or setting up a new server is not an option at this point….

Thanks for any help you can lend!

Max

Hi,

You’ll obviously need DHCP so the AP300 can get an IP address on the network. It will eventually make a lookup for a DNS A record that may be either ‘Symbol-CAPWAP-Address’ or ‘SYMBOL-WISPE-ADDRESS’. You could always perform a packet capture so see what DNS A records the AP300 is trying to query for.

Good Luck!

Your blog was quite useful for the information provided on Motorola AP and its technical background.

We have a Brocade AP300 (Motorola AP300) and RFS6000 controller in place. We were facing issue in AP300 adopting to RFS6000. Then we tried using Layer-3 using DHCP server (options 189 (Switch IP), 192(Discovery -1(Non-IPSEC tunnel), Discovery -2(ipsec tunnel). We could able to adopt the AP300 with the controller.

Happy to hear that you have the Access Ports up and running… I bridge my WLANs to VLANs within my network. On those VLANs I have core routers/switches that have DHCP relays setup to forward BOOTP/DHCP requests to my central DHCP server.

Good Luck!

My access points are now picking up with no problem, I have them working over layer 3 networks with no problems except my clients are not getting ip addresses. Do you use the DHCP on the WS5100 or the server for this?

Regards and thanks

Robert

I will keep you posted….

It sounds like you now have the correct firmware on the AP300 and it’s retrieving an IP address. You now need to work on making sure you pass option 189 to the AP300. If you believe your DHCP server configuration is correct I would suggest you setup a packet trace using WireShark to examine the DHCP reply. Depending on your DHCP server you might be able to skip the packet trace by turning on debug mode with the DHCP server. The logs that BIND puts out can be very detailed and verbose providing an immense about of information. You can also setup a DNS alias, which was mentioned in the original post and I believe that Joerg commented on another possible DNS alias above.

Good Luck!

A bit more of a update firmware now updated and its getting a ip address however pinging the ap the responses are very poor it only replies to a ping every minute etc

Regards

Robert

Im pretty sure they are not getting as far as the DHCP server there is nothing relating to them at all, however thin clients and worstations and laptops all plugged in to the same switch are all reporting back.

Any ideas would be gratefully received.

Regards

Robert

We have a 5100 with Firmware 3.2.0.0-040r

As far as i can tell the firmware on the Ap’s are 01.00-2100r

I will look at the details in the DHCP server and let you know. Thanks for your help on this.

Regards

Robert

What version of software is running on your Motorola Wireless LAN Switch?

Only version 3.x for the WS5100 and v1.x for the RFS7000 supports Layer 3 adoption. If you have one of those supported versions then you also sometimes need to “prime” the AP300 so it can be upgraded to the latest firmware. The AP300 will grab and IP address regardless of whether or not option 189 is setup properly. Do you see the AP300 in your DHCP logs, does it even get an IP address?

Let us know how things turn out.
Mike

I have a problem with my AP300’s picking up via a layer 3 network. The ap’s work connected via level 2 with no problem. They are connected to a switch where thin client workstations and pc’s and laptops etc all are working via DHCP with no problem. On the DHCP server i have setup the 189 option but still nothing! Do you have any advice anything is welcome.

Thanks

Robert

I would suspect that Motorola may have changed the DNS name. Just for everyone else out there DHCP option 43 is used by Cisco Access Points much the same way that Motorola uses DHCP option 189.

Assuming your DHCP server supports vendor class identifiers you should be able to use those to segment your DHCP pools/scopes between Motorola Access Ports and Cisco Access Points.

Thanks for the comment!

found out that Layer 3 adoption is not working using DHCP when Option 189 and Option 43 are in the same DHCP-scope.
Also, the DNS-entry should be named “SYMBOL-WISPE-ADDRESS”

Joerg