Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

HPE/Aruba Instant Access Points – mixing models on the same virtual controller

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In the past if you wanted to mix an Aruba IAP-100 series and an Aruba IAP-200 series in the same network and virtual controller you had to make sure that both APs were running the same software/firmware revision prior to trying to pair them together. If you didn’t you’d end up with one AP becoming the virtual controller and the other one would just continually reboot trying to join the virtual controller because it was unable to upgrade itself as the software image between classes/models is different.

I recently discovered that this is no longer an issue… APs that are not managed by Airwave (AMP) will reach out to the Internet (Aruba Central? or Aruba Activate?) and upgrade themselves without issue to whatever version the virtual controller is running. And APs that are managed by Airwave will also upgrade themselves so long as the upgrade image is downloaded and installed into AMP for the APs to retrieve.

This is a really nice feature, and helps simplify break-fix issues when older APs die and need to be replaced but you don’t have any IAP-135s available. Now you can use IAP-215s or any 200 series APs and whether or not you have Airwave your AP will be upgraded to the correct software to work properly.

You can mix and match APs based on software release…. IAP-135s and IAP-215s running 6.4.x software work well together, as will IAP-215s, IAP-315s and even IAP-515s running 8.6.x software.

Cheers!

Update: Friday November 11, 2021

The is a known issue with older software releases that will break the ability to upgrade from the cloud. The AP in question needs to be on a “newer” release in order to establish an SSL session to the cloud. Additional details can be found in Aruba Support Advisory ARUBA-SA-20191219-PLVL08 titled Aruba Instant Certificate Expiry Issue.

Aruba Instant AP – Master Virtual Controller Election

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I ran into an interesting problem last week… I had a group of 15 Aruba IAPs essentially loose their configuration and revert to the factory default configuration. The issue occurred after a power outage so that gave me a few hints as to what might have occurred.

After some troubleshooting and sleuthing I discovered that there there was a 16’th IAP that was connected to the network but wasn’t able to obtain an IP address because the DHCP scope had been exhausted. When the network switches and routers were rebooted this IAP was able to obtain an IP address and because it had the higher MAC address it became the Master Virtucal Controller and the remaining 15 IAPs all ended up downgrading themselves and adopting the configuration of the 16th IAP (a factory default configuration).

That left me with the question of how do the Aruba Instant APs election of the Virtual Controller Master actually work?

As documented in the Aruba Airheads Community pages;

  1. look into IP scope. IAP with default-ip cannot win
  2. look into 3G capability
  3. look into AP class, Arran (IAP-13x) gets higher priority
  4. look into uptime, older AP gets higher priority
  5. look into AP MAC, bigger address gets higher priority

Since all the IAPs had just been rebooted (power outage) it was left to the IAP with the “biggest” MAC address and that just turned out to be the IAP that was originally unable to connect to the VC because it wasn’t able to obtain an IP address.

Puzzle solved.

Cheers!

Reference;
    How is master IAP elected in an IAP cluster?

 

Minecraft LAN World and Aruba IAPs

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I’m always encouraged when my daughters try to find the answer for themselves before coming to dad for help. In this case they were quick to point out to me that there were some 6,940,000 search results for the phrase, “minecraft lan game not showing up” in Google Search.

In this specific case I had a pretty good idea why they couldn’t play Minecraft together over our home network and it wasn’t something that they were likely to figure out searching through Google Search or watching YouTube videos.

I use my personal home network as a testbed of sorts – and wireless is one technology where you need to-do a lot of testing before pushing it into production. I this case I had replaced my trusty Aruba Instant AP-215s with AP-315s in my home and was testing the newer APs and the 8.3.0.0 software. I’ve got a little of everything on my home wireless network, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, MacOS, iOS, Ubuntu Linux, Lenovo, Acer, Apple iPhone, Apple iPod, Roku, Samsung, Amazon Fire, Motorola, Nest Cameras, and various other IOT devices.

The Aruba Instant APs are configured by default to filter all broadcast packets except ARP requests. This prevents the broadcast that Minecraft emits from reaching other players connected to the same home network.

Once I changed the setting to none and applied the changes the girls were able to play Minecraft together via our home network.

The Aruba IAP-315s are 802.11ac Wave 2 access points and support 5GHz 4×4 MIMO (1,733Mbps max rate) and 2.4GHz 2×2 MIMO (300Mbps max rate) radios. I’m pretty happy so far with the testing… no disconnect issues or performance problems.

Cheers!

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