How to exclude lightweight APs from Ciscoworks Discovery

[kevin_miller]

Now that Cisco has fixed the "cisco.com" suffix in CDP on lightweight APs, I need another way to exclude these devices from Ciscoworks Discovery (isn't it funny how a "bug" can sometimes be useful?).  I've considered sysobjectid, but since they don't support SNMP this doesn't work.  I can't use IP addresses (practically) because they are DHCP and it's too big a burden managing the exclusion list. I've tried DNS suffix, but that doesn't seem to work . . . but I may be doing something wrong.  Any other ideas?  Thanks!

[Joe Clarke · Accepted solution]

You can edit NMSROOT/conf/csdiscovery/system-config.xml, and add the CDP IDs of the LWAPPs there.  The CDPID section looks like:

This system-config.xml file will only be used for ad hoc discoveries and newly scheduled discovery jobs.  If you need to modify an existing discovery job, you'll have to do that under NMSROOT/objects/csdiscovery/JODIB.

By very careful when editing these files.  If you break the well-formedness, Discovery will not work.

[kevin_miller]

Thanks Joe!  I'll make backups of the current files and be careful.  Much appreciated.

[kevin_miller]

Hey Joe.  Since I'm certainly not the only person faced with this, is there any thought given to exempting these devices by default from Ciscoworks Discovery - like you currently do with the IP Phones?

Thanks.
Kevin

[Joe Clarke · Accepted solution]

I've filed CSCtl48773 requesting that the CAPWAP and LWAPP CDP platform IDs be added to the list of excluded devices.

[cwallin]

Do anyone have a working example of a system-config.xml that excludes LWAPP APs, for exemple these 4 models:

AIR-LAP1131AG-E-K9

AIR-LAP1242AG-E-K9

AIR-LAP1242G-E-K9

AIR-LAP1310G-E-K9

BR /Christian

[Joe Clarke]

I do not, but if these are the CDP platforms you see when doing a show cdp neighbor, then you can add them as-is to the system-config.xml.  For example:

[cwallin]

Hi and thank you for answering.

did the trick, but only after we got a modified discovery.jar which took care of some bug.

But, it turns out that both lightweight AND autonomous APs was excluded since they both report the same CDP neighbor.

This behaviour started after version X of the autonomous IOS, I have a older autonomous which report "AIR-APxxxxx".

So now im out of ideas on how to exclude the lightweight APs, they make the discovery very slow right now.

I was thinking of doing an export of all the ligthweight APs IP adresses from WCS, and then import it as filter in Ciscoworks, but the filter dialog doesnt support file import like the seed list dialog does.

Is there maybe some other way of importing a filter list, can it be done by modifying some file or similar?

[Joe Clarke]

Autonomous really uses LAP in the CDP ID?  I thought that was specific to LWAPPs.  My 1242 at home (autonomous) has a platform ID of cisco AIR-AP1242AG-A-K9 and it's running the latest autonomous code (12.4(25d)JA1).

You could add the list of IPs directly to the CSDiscovery-conf.xml file (you could script that), but there is no import mechanism.

[cwallin]

Yeah, im confused right now, the 2 devices I compared use the same software version but report different CDP.
I will upgrade these asap and see if it changes.

Autonomous AP reporting as LAP:

Platform: cisco AIR-LAP1242AG-E-K9  ,  Capabilities: Trans-Bridge IGMP

Interface: FastEthernet0/3,  Port ID (outgoing port): FastEthernet0.1

Holdtime : 125 sec

Version :

Cisco IOS Software, C1240 Software (C1240-K9W7-M), Version 12.4(10b)JDA3, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)

Autonomous AP reporting as AP:

Platform: cisco AIR-AP1242AG-E-K9   ,  Capabilities: Trans-Bridge IGMP

Interface: FastEthernet0/23,  Port ID (outgoing port): FastEthernet0.1

Holdtime : 174 sec

Version :

Cisco IOS Software, C1240 Software (C1240-K9W7-M), Version 12.4(10b)JDA3, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)

Thank you for the tip about CSDiscovery-conf.xml!