DHCP option 43 value in Microsoft DHCP, for Cisco switches managed by

[Jan Erik Dahlen]

How to find the DHCP option 43 value in Microsoft DHCP, for Cisco switches managed by Catalyst center.

In Infoblox the same value was : 5A1N;B2;K4;I10.100.0.103;J80

[marce1000]

   - Not sure how the question related to Catalyst Center directly ; for Microsoft setups take a look at ;
      https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless-mobility/wireless-lan-wlan/97066-dhcp-option-43-00.html#toc-hId--1450681875
      as an example ,

  M.

[Jan Erik Dahlen]

Thank you for the reply. This article is about how AP`s will find the WLC. That one we have added.
What we are struggling with, is for a new switch to find the DNAC/Catalyst Center.
I am not even sure if it is used/needed, as we normally will run a discovery, to get it to populate CC discovered devices.

[Preston Chilcote]

@jan Option 43 for switches is used for the Plug and Play process, which is a very popular time saver for deploying new hardware without first having to unbox in a staging environment.  PnP supports both APs and switches.  If you change your DHCP config to point option 43 to the Catalyst Center Enterprise IP address instead of WLC, you will see new APs show up in the PnP menu too, and you can name and assign them during PnP Claim workflow to connect to the appropriate WLC.

P.S.  It is technically possible to have multiple option 43's in the same DHCP pool and assign based on hardware, but I haven't seen it used very often.

[Jan Erik Dahlen]

Thanks for your reply. This is what we are looking for. Do you by any chance have a link to an article describing how to set the value, to use in MS DHCP options ?

[Preston Chilcote]

@Jan Erik Dahlen  It's in the link that @marce1000 provided.  It sounds like you already have an optino 43 configured for your wireless devices.  You would just need to change the hex from the WLC IP address to the hex encoded Catalyst Center Enterprise IP address.  But this is not something you need to do if you are only onboarding brownfield switches.

[GemmaGage]

Set dhcp option 43 by defining a vendor class (option 60) and entering the WLC IP in hex (e.g....192.168.1.10 > f104C0A8010A) under Scope options to help cisco devices find the wlc.