AP Continously reboot before association.

[rpastrana]

Hello, recently we have upgrade the controllers WLC 4400 from 4.2 to 7.2 and whenever we replace an AP, the new one takes many reboots before associating to the controller, what could be the issue, they are taking like 30 mins to associate.... Has anyone encountered this issue before ? Tried to check the traces but nothing came up, just seeing in the router which the AP is connected is getting rebooted and getting a new IP everytime, we have option 43 enabled in the router.

Kind regards.

[Leo Laohoo]

Hello, recently we have upgrade the controllers WLC 4400 from 4.2 to 7.2 and whenever we replace an AP,

That's sooooo NOT possible.  A 4400 cannot run higher than 7.0.X.

they are taking like 30 mins to associate

Everytime it joins, the AP could be downloading the firmware.  Why it takes so long could also be caused by slow LAN/WAN link.

[Amjad Abdullah]

Agree with Leo.

You probably mean your code is 7.0 not 7.2. simply because there is no 7.2 code for 4400 controller model.

Now, just like Leo described, when the AP tries to connect to the WLC it downloads the AP firmware from the WLC. If the AP firmware is already downloaded prevoiusly from the WLC then the download phaste skipped. Otherwise (like in your case) the firmware of the AP is getting downloaded from the WLC, the AP is then rebooted after downloading the firmware and come up with the new firmware. This happen only once until the AP gets the new firmware. After APs got the firmware if you disconnect then connect them, they'll not take much time to join because they simply have the firmware installed prevoiusly.

HTH

Amjad

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[Rasika Nayanajith]

If possible get a AP console output while this happening, that will tell exactly what's going on. 30 min is too abnormal.

Normally when AP does not find any controller (during discovery phase) or does not get DHCP address in the first instance AP will go on reboot process until it gets a IP & find the WLC. Above console output would show this.

As a suggestion before replacing your WAP  in production, bring your new AP  online at  your test environment. Then new AP will get 7.0 image & learnt the WLC IP already. So when you replace the WAP in production network it should get immediate registration and should not have more than 1-2 min outage for wireless service.

HTH

Rasika

[Abhishek Abhishek]

Hello, recently we have upgrade the controllers WLC 4400 from 4.2 to 7.2 and whenever we replace an AP, the new one takes many reboots before associating to the controller, what could be the issue, they are taking like 30 mins to associate.... Has anyone encountered this issue before ? Tried to check the traces but nothing came up, just seeing in the router which the AP is connected is getting rebooted and getting a new IP everytime, we have option 43 enabled in the router

Case solution I want to propose-

In controller software release 4.2.61.0 and later, the bootup configuration file of the controller is stored in an Extensible Markup Language (XML) format, rather than in binary format. When you upgrade a controller to 4.2.61.0 or a later software release, the binary configuration file migrates and converts to XML, but the configuration file does not migrate correctly if it contains any of these characters as part of a user configuration string: &, <, >, ', "".

For example, a WLAN profile named R&D causes an XML parsing error after the second reboot, even though this profile name is valid in 4.1 and previous configurations.

Note: You cannot download a binary configuration file onto a controller that runs software release 5.0.148.0. Also, do not attempt to make changes to the configuration file. If you do so and then download the file to a controller, the controller displays a cyclic redundancy checksum (CRC) error while it reboots and returns the configuration parameters to their default value

For more information you can refer the link -

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk722/tk809/technologies_configuration_example09186a00805f381f.shtml