Any idea on when/if Solarwinds Wireless Network Monitor will support Cisco Wireless LAN controllers? I'm even willing to donate one or two to Solarwinds if it would help get development started.
Would it help if I asked nicely?
P L E A S E ? ?
I figured it was worth a shot
Wendy D.,
No worries. We are very much aware that the networking world is moving to the "thin" access points. We are trying to decide which of several responses we might take to this trend. I would hint at which way we're going to go, but I don't know. We're not going to make a definitive decision until after Orion 9.0 ships.
Denny LeCompte Sr. Product Manager, Orion SolarWinds Austin, TX
Please update the product documentation to make it clear that Cisco WLCs are not supported. We believed you when it said "Monitors client statistics for Cisco and Avaya wireless APs" and purchased this module to monitor our new Cisco wireless implementations. Hopefully our Sales rep will be understanding and allow us to refund the license.
Jeff Salisbury
Belkin International, Inc.
Hi Jeff,
As the new PM for Wireless I'm presently road mapping or next feature set. I don't have anything concrete to share with you now, but would like to know more about what visibility/monitoring you would like to see in WLCs and wireless as a whole.
Andy
mcbridea: don't have anything concrete to share with you now, but would like to know more about what visibility/monitoring you would like to see in WLCs and wireless as a whole.
I know this question wasn't directed at me, but I just wanted to say that I'd be happy if you provided the information currently included in the Wireless Network Monitor for my WLCs. Beyond that I'd like to see the user name of the person connected as supplied by 802.1x.. A top X number of AP's by number of connected users would also be useful.
Thanks for the input. I'm taking all user requests into account.
Can someone clarify this for me. We were about to order the Wireless add-on but after reading this I'm not sure it will work. We use Cisco AIR-LAP1242AG-A-K9 APs. Are these using LWAPP? I know we have the WLCs as well and CAS, NAC, etc.
Before I put the money down on this add on will it work with these APs?Thanks.BB
(1) Orion V9.1 SLX running Web Site(4) Orion V9.1 SLX remote pollers (2) NCM (Cirrus) V5.0 SLX MS SQL2005 x64 EE VoIP Monitor NetFlow Traffic Analysis 13000+ elements
The Cisco part number you just provided is a lightweight version of the Cisco AIronet 1242. This will not work with the Orion Wireless Add-on since these APs don't support SNMP.
Indeed the manufacturer has left SNMP out of the lightweight devices.. A couple of paths to investigate if a device will work in Wireless Network Monitor...
1. MIB walk the target device looking fo the 802.11 MIB (AKA dot 11 MIB)
2. Download the trial version of Wireless Network Monitor and test drive.
Yes, they don't support SNMP.
Given how unmanageable custom MIB pollers are for collecting all the information I need from my WLCs, I haven't bothered to create the several hundred I would like. What we really need is support in the Orion Wireless Monitor for Cisco Wireless LAN Controllers to provide a useful GUI to summarize all the useful wireless information that other people are able to collect from their fat access points.
Here is the only custom MIB poller that I'm using for my WLCs. It will show you the number of wireless clients that are connected to the WLC.
1.3.6.1.4.1.14179.2.1.1.1.38
aLTeReGo:Given how unmanageable custom MIB pollers are for collecting all the information I need from my WLCs
This should get a lot better with Orion 9. And we'll support MIB Tables, which should open up other possible monitoring.
denny.lecompte:This should get a lot better with Orion 9. And we'll support MIB Tables, which should open up other possible monitoring.
Agreed, this is much better in v9.0 but you need to understand that clients that are using Wireless LAN Controllers tend to be large organizations with hundreds or even thousands of access points. They moved away from fat access points because thin APs are much easier to deploy and manage. I have several wireless LAN controllers each with 150 AP's connected. Let's say I wanted to collect information from 5 OIDs per AP connected to the WLC. That's 750 custom MIB pollers per WLC. That's quite a bit of administrative overhead, and the layout of that information is no where near as easy to understand or customize as it is un the Orion Wireless Monitor add-on.
Given the fact that large organizations are the ones that tend to be moving in the direction of thin access points, Solarwinds should extend support in the Wireless Monitor Add-on for these devices and restructure the pricing for the module to a per-AP model to recover development and support costs.