Using Aironet AP as wireless monitor

[dbfokusde]

Hello,

we have purchased a couple of new Aironet APs for our office:

AIR-AP1262N-E-K9

My objective is to use some of these as wireless monitors to scan the vicinity and to report the SSIDs and RSSI values of all detected APs.

Basically something similar to the Linux command: "iwlist wlan0 scan".

Periodically, I would like to transmit the scanning results to a central server (e.g. via SNMP) for monitoring the whole network area.

How can I achieve this?

Are there built-in commands in the IOS to do this?

Or can I use Tcl scripts to perform this task?

Any other ideas?

I have worked with Cisco routers and switches before but I am new to wireless devices. So any advice and idea is highly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help!

Kind regards

Daniel

[George Stefanick]

The AP in autonomous mode cant do this. If you have a controller you can see some of this data , but you would need a WCS/NCS application to help better manage that information. You could also purchase a MSE with WIPS.

All this cost money.

How big is your install ?

__________________________________________________________________________________________
"Satisfaction does not come from knowing the solution, it comes from knowing why." - Rosalind Franklin
__________________________________________________________________________________________
‎"I'm in a serious relationship with my Wi-Fi. You could say we have a connection."

[dbfokusde]

Thank you for the reply.

At the moment, we have approximately 20 AIR-AP1262N-E-K9 APs which will be set up to operate in autonomous mode.

As this is an official Cisco forum I understand that the use of additional products will be recommended. However, we really don't need a complex solution like the MSE/WIPS.

Is there really no way of running a scan of the vicinity of the autonomous AP? This seems to be a quite basic functionality.

Or setting the AP to a monitoring mode?

I will work through all the options for setting up the APs. I simply cannot believe there's no way of doing this.

[dbfokusde]

I have found an interesting command for the antenna alignment:

“During the antenna alignment test, the radio disassociates from its parent, probes adjacent access points, and records the MAC address and signal strength of responses it receives. [...] You display the last 10 results using the show dot11 antenna-alignment command, which lists the MAC address and signal level for the access points that responded to the probe”

This would be exactly what I am looking for. Unfortunately, it is not possible to activate this as described in the user manual:

AP#dot11 dot11radio 0 antenna-alignment

                             ^

% Invalid input detected at '^' marker.

AP#show dot11 antenna-alignment

No data, antenna-alignment command not run

The device is set to Access Point mode. Current firmware version is "C1260 Software (AP3G1-K9W7-M), Version 12.4(25d)JA1".

Does anybody have an idea why this command does not exist in this firmware? Does it only work with specific mode settings? Or might a firmware update to 15.2.2 help?

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

[dbfokusde]

Just for the record: The antenna-alignment command only works if the device is set to non-root mode (e.g. repeater):

https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/325584

Then it is possible to execute the antenna-alignment command which reports the signal strength of adjacent root APs:

AP1#dot11 Dot11Radio 0 antenna-alignment timeout 5

Type escape sequence "Control ^" to abort.
Response from 64d8.14cd.d7c0  Signal -16 dBm
Response from 64d8.14cd.d7c0  Signal -17 dBm
Response from 64d8.14cd.d7c0  Signal -17 dBm
Response from 64d8.14cd.d7c0  Signal -16 dBm
Response from 64d8.14cd.d7c0  Signal -16 dBm
Response from 64d8.14cd.d7c0  Signal -16 dBm

...

The question is still how to automate this process. But it's a start and the information appears to be really useful.

P.S.: The description in the manuals about this command is really scarce. Maybe it's not often used.