Configure and Troubleshoot Wired and Wireless Networks Using Cisco Prime Infrastructure

[ciscomoderator]

With Tejas Shah

Welcome to the Cisco Support Community Ask the Expert conversation. This is an opportunity to learn and ask questions troubleshoot, and manage your converged wireless and wired network using Cisco Prime Infrastructure with Cisco expert Tejas Shah. This is a continuation of the live webcast. Cisco Prime Infrastructure is built with scalability and extensibility in mind. It has the ability to manage global enterprise networks with thousands of network devices and hundreds of thousands of access devices, or smaller commercial networks with the same level of control and resiliency.

Tejas Shah is a senior technical marketing engineer for Cisco Prime Infrastructure and Collaboration products. He has deployed Cisco Prime Collaboration Manager at various customer sites to help customers monitor and troubleshoot their video infrastructure. In addition, he has been part of the Network Operations Center team at Cisco Live events for six years. Shah joined Cisco in 1995 and has been in the Technical Assistance Center team supporting various network management system products for more than six years.

Remember to use the rating system to let Tejas know if you have received an adequate response.

Tejas might not be able to answer each question due to the volume expected during this event. Remember that you can continue the conversation on the

Network Management Community

shortly after the event.

This event lasts through April 12, 2013. Visit this forum often to view responses to your questions and the questions of other community members.

Webcast related links:

• Video Recording
  
• Slides of the Live Presentation
  
• FAQ
  

[tshah]

smwool wrote:
I asked this question during the webinar:
Can you EASILY use Prime to troubleshoot co-channel interferance problems in the 802.11G spectrum?
Tejas said this was a "great question" and that he wanted to investigate further prior to answering and would post on here.
Thank you.
Shawn

There is a Monitor RRM section (From Classic view, navigate  to Monitor > RRM; from Lifecycle View, navigate to Operate > Wireless >  RRM.) that provides help along these lines and also  CleanAir Reporting tools.  Additional deeper dive tools  we use are WLCCA.  Equivalent version for new mobility is being developed as we speak and should be  out shortly.

[sasuazo]

Hello Tejas,

Do you get location information from APs operating in ELM mode?  I have two 1141s in ELM mode, but I only seem to get info from the 1131 that operates in monitor mode.

Thank you.

Sergio

[tshah]

sasuazo wrote:
Hello Tejas, 
Do you get location information from APs operating in ELM mode?  I have two 1141s in ELM mode, but I only seem to get info from the 1131 that operates in monitor mode.
Thank you.
Sergio

Yes you do.    How are you determining that they do not get location?   To dig  further into this I would recommend opening a TAC case with detailed information.

[gzelks]

Hello Tejas,

This is a question regarding PI's ability to receive SNMP Traps.

There are many traps in the supported list for wired and wireless devices.  However, since PI can be configured as a trap receiver, are you able to create your own custom trap definitions which PI can receive from a third party device? or thrid party application?

At current if the trap is not in the supported list, PIs behaviour is to drop the trap, but I would like to raise an event/alarm based on SNMP traps.

Thanks in advance,

Greg.

[Nitzbegin]

Hello Tejas,

Could you please let me know, Whether Prime Infra will support different code versions of WLC's and how is tat diff from NCS. ??:

[tshah]

Yes Nitin.  Prime Infrastructure is very much aligned with wireless controller releases.  For eg. PI 1.3 is aligned with Controller 7.4 release. 

Hope this is what you were looking for,

Tejas

[tshah]

Nithin M wrote:
Hello Tejas,
Could you please let me know, Whether Prime Infra will support different code versions of WLC's and how is tat diff from NCS. ??:

Well, we do today.  For AireOS we support back to 7.0 “officially”  and all  older stuff back to at least 6.0 should work fine.   We just don’t “remove  anything”  from builds, but do not fully regression test every build past 7.0 as  of last release notes.  For Uniffied Access Switches/Controllers, we will support multiple versions moving  forward, but with 2.0 release and new mobility arch, we will need to start with UA  May Maintenance release.

[tshah]

Good Q Greg, Please see my responses inline

This is a question regarding PI's ability to receive SNMP Traps.
There are many traps in the supported list for wired and wireless devices.  However, since PI can be configured as a trap receiver, are you able to create your own custom trap definitions which PI can receive from a third party device? or thrid party application?
==> This is not possible today.  We definitely have this as a roadmapped item.
At current if the trap is not in the supported list, PIs behaviour is to drop the trap, but I would like to raise an event/alarm based on SNMP traps.
==> Yes, this will also be supported once the generic trap capability is added in the product.
Thanks in advance,
Greg.

[tshah]

gzelks wrote:
This is a question regarding PI's ability to receive SNMP Traps.
There are many traps in the supported list for wired and wireless devices.  However, since PI can be configured as a trap receiver, are you able to create your own custom trap definitions which PI can receive from a third party device? or thrid party application?

          Currently you are not able to create or receive custom traps from 3rd party devices/applications.   We are planning on supporting those in future but it's on the radar currently, but it is not on the roadmap yet.   We will continue to support Generic traps from 3rd party devices though.

[Jonathan Franz Torrez Soria]

Hello Tejas

I wish to know if the CP 1.2 can monitoring the interface WAN of my business, the logic it's the next:

Router/ASA ==> Modem ==> ISP

i whis to know how i can monitoring the link between the Modem and ISP.

The idea it's use the cisco prime in place of the Intermapper, show me the link status, throw alerts when the link is down.

if this is possible, how i can do this configuration.

thanks in advance

Jonathan.

[tshah]

Jonathan,

Prime Infrastructure has a built in group called WAN Interfaces.   You can leverage that group for this.  The challenge is how do we get the Modem interfaces into this group?  If you don't see these interfaces by default, you can create your own user group based on Modem's interface type.  You can then do custom polling on that custom port interface group.   I'm sure we should be able to do this using Prime Infrastructure.  

Feel free to evaluate the product by going to www.cisco.com/go/nmsevals  and download Prime Infrastructure 1.3.

Let me know if you have any further questions on this.

best regards,

Tejas

[jharris.ms]

We use PI for wireless monitoring and are interested in the switch trace feature of rogue APs; however, were told that 1.2 does not support this behind NAT.  I was wondering if this feature will work behind NAT in either 1.3 or 2.0?  Would also like to know if there's a way to automatically classify an unclassified APs as friendly if it meets certain criteria?  and if not is there a way to do bulk classification of unclassified APs or is this done per AP.  Right now the only way I can classify an AP is per AP and haven't figure out how to do this in a bulk method.

After attending the webcast there seems to be a lot of features that are being added in 2.0 with troubleshooting and configuration etc.  Are these features available over NAT and multi-tenant?  We manage numerous device behind NAT and would like to deploy PI on these networks.  Thanks.

[ciscomoderator]

Hello Tejas,

Thanks for the great information in last week's live webcast. There are still few questions that need answered from the live event in regards to licencing:

1. Is context aware licensing required on Mobility Services Engine (MSE) in order to allow rogues and clients to be placed on maps?
2. Why would the PCI compliance report only show "no data available"?  Is this a licensing issue?
3. Are the various parts and features of Prime license-based?

Thank you.

Cisco Moderator

[tshah]

ciscomoderator wrote:
Hello Tejas,
Thanks for the great information in last week's live webcast. There are still few questions that need answered from the live event in regards to licencing:
Is context aware licensing required on Mobility Services Engine (MSE) in order to allow rogues and clients to be placed on maps?
==>yes, MSE Context Aware license is required for rogue tracking.

Why would the PCI compliance report only show "no data available"?  Is this a licensing issue?
==> Yes that could be one issue.  Also currently this report is only for wireless devices, and more wired capabilites are added with each release.

Are the various parts and features of Prime license-based?
==> There are 3 main licenses above the base license:  
Lifecycle - For basic wired/wireless device management
Assurance - For any AVC, Netflow, NAM management
Compliance - For compliance related reports or dashlets.
Thank you.
Cisco Moderator

[ciscomoderator]

Hello Tejas,

There are still few questions that need answered from the live event in regards to WLCs & wireless networks:

1. How can we do exception-based capacity reporting for Wireless LAN Controllers (WLCs) and access points (APs) if we look back one month and forecasting forward?
2. How to import heat maps from Wireless Control System (WCS) to Prime?
3. When upgrading APs that are deployed in hundreds of sites, but on the same controller, is there a way to limit the upgrade to only certain sites until the new code is verified?
4. What determines malicious rouge APs?

Thank you for your responses.

Cisco Moderator