Cisco Catalyst 9120AXI in sensor mode on IOS-XE 17.3.5a?

[Dominic Stalder]

Hi guys

is it possible to run an Cisco Catalyst 9120AXI in sensor mode on a Cisco C9800 with IOS-XE 17.3.5a? I tried to "convert" an AP to the sensor mode with "ap name {name} mode sensor", but nothing happens there.

And the documentation on CCO is not really clear on this...

Thanks in advance and best regards

Dominic

[Flavio Miranda]

Hi

   If you run the command "show ap dot11 dual-band summary" it should show.

Device# show ap dot11 dual-band summary
AP Name Mac Address Slot Admin State Oper State Width Txpwr Mode Subband channel
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AP4001.7A39.2E12 7070.8b24.1ba0 0 Enabled N/A NA N/A Sensor All (Sensor)

The documentation fail on show AP model x sensor capacity. If you look at https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/wireless/access-points/guide-c07-744250.html   you are going to see 9100 being reffered many times which imply that it supports, but, not clear also.

If you have DNAC, it should be a good place to check as well, as the AP will get there as a sensor.

[Dominic Stalder]

Hi Flavio

thanks for your answer, but unfortunately the command "show ap dot11 dual-band summary" does not show the AP, that I wanted to configure as sensor, running in sensor mode.

At the same time, there are a lot of misleading information available on CCO, or how would you understand these comments from different Release notes / papers:

- Supported AP as Sensor (out of a Youtube video from 2018): Cisco Aironet 2800, 3800, 4800
- IOS-XE 17.1.x: Supported
- IOS-XE 17.2.x: Not Supported anymore ("Sensor mode is not supported on the APs")
- AireOS 8.5.x: Supported
- AireOS 8.10.x: Not Supported ("starting with Release 8.10, we recommend that you do not configure Cisco APs in sensor mode")
- IP SLA testing is supported on Wave 2 (Aironet 1800, 2800, 3800, and 4800 Series) and Wi-Fi 6 (Cisco Catalyst 9100) APs running AireOS Release 8.8.111 and later and Catalyst 16.12.1s and later

Regards

Dominic

[Rich R]

Maybe ask TAC.  The 17.2.1 release notes say:

Behavior Changes

• Sensor mode is not supported on the APs.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/9800/17-2/release-notes/rn-17-2-9800.html#concept_gfq_vld_ykb

And the sensor mode has been removed from all the subsequent releases config guides so I wonder if they discontinued the feature?

[Dominic Stalder]

Hi rrudling

thanks and exactly, it looks like the support for AP as a sensor is gone with IOS-XE 17.2 and above, unfortunately in my opinion. This was one of the cooler features for DNA assurance, without the need to buy another hardware (Cisco Aironet 1800S) to deploy that sensor feature.

But I will go on and do some more tests with our older AireOS 8.5 release and will check with Cisco TAC later on.

Regards

Dominic