Disable radios when an AP first connects to WLC

[Christopher Rudi]

I am deploying new 2700 series AP's to a 5508 but I want them to disable their radios when they first connect. Reason being is these new AP's are being installed in a live environment with old 1200 series AP's connecting to WiSM blades and I don't want the new AP's to interfere with the existing. I want them to register so I can name them, put them in the proper AP Groups, etc... and then once they are all in place and online I will turn off the old ones and turn on the new. I did Google and Cisco searches but too many results to pore through so I was hoping someone knows of a link or can step me through how to do this. I'm guessing it's some sort of CLI Template but I'm not really sure. Thanks!

[Sandeep Choudhary]

Best is to disable 802.11a  and 802.11b radios Network on the new WLC(5508) where the new APs will join.

here are the commands for WLC:

 config 802.11b disable network

 config 802.11a disable network

Step1: Disable radio N/W on new WLC by using above commands

Step2: Connect all new AP to new WLC

Step3: Remove all old APs from WISM

Step4: enable radios on new WLC by using these commands:

 config 802.11b enable network

 config 802.11a enable network

Hope it helps.

Regards

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[Christopher Rudi]

Ugh, I failed to mention the 5508 is already servicing other AP's so doing that will also disable them. The 2700's will register to this same WLC. Now, I do have another 5508 in HA mode so I wonder - can I move the existing AP's on the primary to the HA member? I think I can register AP's to the HA for up to 90 days. That sound right?

Or, the other way around... register the new AP's to the HA. I don't think it will take 90 days to get them all installed. There's about 200 altogether.

[Scott Fella · Accepted solution]

Your better off enabling Out of Office feature.

In the GUI, the feature is under Wireless | RF Profiles.  Hopefully you are running code that supports this. You would enable Out of Box and enable persistence.

-Scott 

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[Christopher Rudi]

I'm running 8.0.133 and the feature is there. I never knew about that setting. Reading up on it looks to be exactly what I need. Thank you!!

[Scott Fella]

It's either that or else you start your wlan ID at 17 or higher. This way no SSID's will be broadcasted since only 1-16 is default on the default group.  

Also with out of box, there have been some issues when you move them into an AP group later that the radios are still down. You might have to enable the radios on each AP if this happens, but you can just script that and paste that into the cli. 

-Scott 

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