Query on OUI update on Cisco WLC

[BhaskarDS]

I have a query regarding the OUI update in WLC. In HA deployment, do we need to reboot only primary WLC or both the active and standby after the OUI update ?

[Scott Fella]

I don’t think the OUI syncs between units. What you can do is load it on the active and reload, then load it on the standby unit and reload it also when the sync is up. Then you can force reload so that your primary is back up.

[BhaskarDS]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for your reply.

I see in the Cisco document they have mentioned as below -

"HA support for OUI update: HA link must be up while downloading the OUI file to the Active controller, so that the OUI update gets applied to the Standby controller as well."

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/8-2/config-guide/b_cg82/b_cg82_chapter_01000010.html

But the document hasn't mentioned anything about rebooting both the controllers.

[Leo Laohoo]

No reboot required, however, be aware of CSCvg66702.

[Rich R]

Just noticed this older discussion and have something more to add. TAC opened https://bst.cloudapps.cisco.com/bugsearch/bug/CSCvt48313 for me a little while back - but the conclusion is that this will never be fixed in AireOS. 9800 IOS-XE support for OUI update is planned but not yet supported - currently only updated by loading a new software version. For AireOS the TAC explanation goes like this: "Currently the WLC has the OUIs in an XML file and when we upload a new OUI file, the WLC checks the existing OUIs in the xml file and compares with the oui.txt files and only the ones already in the xml will be updated.
If there are new OUIs that do not exist in the internal XML, they will not be added to the xml file."
If you badly need a new OUI then you'll have to open a TAC case and request it and then Cisco might consider including it with a future release, but their preferred/recommended solution is to use ISE profiling not local profiling. So 'updating' the local OUI file generally has little, if any, effect if you're already on a recent version of code.

No reboot required on recent code versions and OUI update is synced to the HA SSO standby.

ps. also see https://linuxnet.ca/ieee/oui/ which tries to clean up mistakes in the original IEEE file.  I recall finding some mistakes it had missed which I reported to them but never got any response and haven't checked it since then.

[Jerome N]

Hi,

What version would "recent" begin from?

Thanks

[Rich R]

As at right now (7th August 2020) that would be:

8540: https://software.cisco.com/download/home/286284728/type/280926587/release/8.10.130.0
9800: https://software.cisco.com/download/home/286321396/type/282046477/release/Amsterdam-17.2.1a

Basically the latest available code will have the latest OUI file.

[Jerome N]

Thank you again.
Why i asked was determine whether a reboot is still required after uploading the Oui.txt file?
We are currently on 8.5.151.0 so updating the OUI as an interim measure due to change management when performing software upgrades is quite a lengthy process.

[Rich R]

As mentioned above no reboot is required but remember that update will not *add* anything new - it might just change 1 or 2 existing entries - for example if vendor name changed.
This will give you some idea of the difference between 8.5 and 8.10:
8.5.161:
>show profiling policy summary
Number of Builtin Classification Profiles: 233
>show profiling oui-string summary
Number of OUI Strings Available: 3284
8.10.128.114 (should be about the same as 8.10.130.0):
>show profiling policy summary
Number of Builtin Classification Profiles: 286
>show profiling oui-string summary
Number of OUI Strings Available: 7584

[Jerome N]

Thanks. Really appreciate your reply on this.