C9800-L Not Pushing WLAN Config

[NWJ]

Hi,

I have a C9800-L-F-K9 running on 17.9.2 code where not matter what WLAN config I apply within the tag, it will not broadcast on the AP.

Issuing a "show dot11 wlan" directly on the AP shows no thing applied to radios:

L02TEST#show dot11 wlan
Radio Vap SSID State Auth Assoc Switching
0 0 DOWN Central Central Central
0 1 DOWN Central Central Central
0 2 DOWN Central Central Central
0 3 DOWN Central Central Central
0 4 DOWN Central Central Central
0 5 DOWN Central Central Central
0 6 DOWN Central Central Central
0 7 DOWN Central Central Central
0 8 DOWN Central Central Central
0 9 DOWN Central Central Central
0 10 DOWN Central Central Central
0 11 DOWN Central Central Central
0 12 DOWN Central Central Central
0 13 DOWN Central Central Central
0 14 DOWN Central Central Central
0 15 DOWN Central Central Central
1 0 DOWN Central Central Central
1 1 DOWN Central Central Central
1 2 DOWN Central Central Central
1 3 DOWN Central Central Central
1 4 DOWN Central Central Central
1 5 DOWN Central Central Central
1 6 DOWN Central Central Central
1 7 DOWN Central Central Central
1 8 DOWN Central Central Central
1 9 DOWN Central Central Central
1 10 DOWN Central Central Central
1 11 DOWN Central Central Central
1 12 DOWN Central Central Central
1 13 DOWN Central Central Central
1 14 DOWN Central Central Central
1 15 DOWN Central Central Central

I have tried upgrading to 17.9.3 which had no effect. I associated the AP with a 9800-40 running the same version and there was no issue.
Checked country code config also as that can effect broadcasting on some models. I wanted to see if anyone has had this issue previously. I would love to stick to an earlier MD release but this is the only version that supports 9164APs that we are planning to deploy.

Any help would be appreciated.

[balaji.bandi]

Not that i have tested 17.9.3 that is latest code, and you correct new AP need latest code.

Couple of things need to check in the GUI, is the SSID enabled state and broacasted ?

is the AP in right AP gropup ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FpYS_rphik

[NWJ]

All WLANs and policies in enabled state with broadcasting set to enable. I tried a test SSID and profile with only basic setting enabled but no luck.

APs show as registed with no misconfiguration and "show capwap client config" on the AP displays that the tags are assigned.

[Scott Fella]

Factory reset the ap using the mode button and see if that helps after the ap rejoins the controller.  Other than that, you have a choice of upgrading the code on the controller to test or reach out to TAC.

[NWJ]

Raising a case with TAC as I've moved 2x proven working APs over and same issue.
I'll update this when I know more for others benefit.

[Scott Fella]

Yeah keep us posted, interested on what TAC comes up with.

[Scott Fella]

Just to add, you have other ap's that are working and broadcasting the same SSID?  I tested the 9166 with 17.10.x a few months ago with no issues.  If the ap is joined, then there should be no issues with compatibility.  Open a TAC case while you have this post open to see what they say.

[marce1000]

 - Have a checkup-review of your  C9800-L-F-K9  configuration with (CLI) :   show tech wireless , feed the output into :
                                                 https://cway.cisco.com/wireless-config-analyzer

 M.

[NWJ]

Thanks. Checked all that and the errors are things I'm aware such as a tag that is no longer used and a misconfigured controller IP.
Nothing relating to WLAN config.

[Leo Laohoo]

I think I have an idea what this is all about.  

Does the tag have a mix of upper- and lower case?  

See, there is this "feature" in the IOS-XE code where, even though the tags are case sensitive if someone enters two different tags and spelt the same, the system will accept the two different tags but will not throw out an error.  

For example, if I have a tag called BLAH-policy and I configured the AP to use a policy called BLAH-Policy, this is accepted by the controller and no error/warning message will be produced. 

As far as the developers are concerned, it is not a bug and this is to be expected.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[NWJ]

Tags are a mix of lower and upper case but they are applied to the AP using the dropdown in AP configuration on the WLC so it wouldn't be possible to the names in different formats as I'm picking from what the WLC has available.

[Leo Laohoo]

Copy the config into a text file. 

Using a text editor, configure "case sensitive" and search for the tags.  

The tags may have been configured using GUI but it is not fail-safe.

[Rich R]

Also look for accidental trailing spaces on the end of any of the text.
And make sure the names are not too LONG - there are some bugs around the length of tag names - and no special characters (dash - and underscore _ should be fine though)

[JPavonM]

This weird thing happened to me yesterday as well with one AP and c9800-CL running 17.9.3

AP broadcast SSIDs whenever there is a mix of local forwarding (corporate) and anchored ones (byod and guest), but it stops from broadcasting anything when I turn all SSIDs locally forwarded, even the corporate one it was broadcasting before.

I'm doing more checks about this weird behaviour, but as @NWJ said, everything looks good, "show ap name XXX tag detail" returns everything is good (neither any tag wrongly typed, nor any tag or profile missed), debug capwap on AP shows all tags are properly received, but then all outputs in AP shows no SSID, and I see ZERO of them from been broadcasted.

Will update as soon as I'd get something.

[JPavonM]

Please allow me to self reply my comment,

I have not been able to reproduce the issue so I don't know if that was due to a code failure or not, but I'm 100% sure it wasn't due to misstyped tags as the Lab WLC has been running the same config for 1-year, and AP was moving with Tags written through "AP Tag persistency" so not static configuration in the Lab WLC.