WCS Guest Access

[sandjose]

Our current wirleess infrastructure consist of a WCS/WLC and AP's.

We currently have guest access  and use the lobby ambassdor  feature on the WCS .The Guest users are currentlty created manually by the lobby ambassdor manually

There was request that came internally to automate the entire process and reduces the time required to create the guest users .

Our requirement would be to create a set of 50 users with random password created by the WCS  and then push this credentials to the WLC's .

Our lobby ambassdor would take print out of these user/password details and put in an envelope  and give out to the guest users when requested.

The users list will only  be valid for a day and for the next day we create another set of 50 users .

The credentials should only be active for 3 hours  from the time they log in  which means if a user logins at 9 AM he session should only be active for 3 hours.

Iam looking at insights on how we can acheive the same using WCS or any third paty guest access applications or i can also look at developing my own application with some kind of an API that can talk with WCS.

TIA

Sandeep

[Nicolas Darchis]

I'm under the impression that you could achieve that with Nac Guest Server (unlike its name says, it's not necessarily tied with NAC).

You could check in the config guide if all the features you want are in there. But creating bulk guest users is surely inside

Nicolas

[sandjose]

Nicolas - You are right, all my requirements can be met by the NAC Guest server . I had been going through the documentation of this product for the past few days.

Couple of thoughts   that came into my mind is that all the features that i was looking at is all software based , it has no dependency on hardware .

Since we already use WCS for lobby ambassador, why did Cisco not integrate the same features on WCS and went and put it in the NAC .

I agree there is a strong correlation between NAC and Guest access  But Iam not able to justify in getting a new product /Hardware for doing advanced Guest access .

We bought the WCS primarily for the Guest access and guest account management and controller management was secondary .

I don't understand Cisco strategy as to putting pieces of the same feature in multiple devices and customer having to purchase different hardware for the different features of the same technology.

I understand that this is not a forum to comment but just thought of penning down my views .However i will have a talk with the Cisco SE on the same.

Thanks for your help- Regards

[Nicolas Darchis]

Guess what, you are not the only one to comment on that. Cisco ACS will soon migrate with Nac Guest Server and NAC under the new "ISE".

I've also heard that WCS will merge with wired network management.

So yes you've been heard and Cisco will stop having different products doing the same thing.

The original reason was that the WLC could create "users with a certain lifetime", then WCS added a small enhanced management on this, etc ... and in the end it started to look like a "NGS light" but historically it was not the goal :-)

[sandjose]

I have heard about positron some time back I had a confusion if the NGS is same as positron .I initially thought positron to be  the replacement for Cisco ACS and never imagined the guest access features to be there .

Regarding WCS merging with wired network management was the work involved in getting a unified NMS for NGWC(Next Generation wiring closet) . There was code name I think was lumous or so, not able to recollect the same.

[Nicolas Darchis]

all correct. Positron became the ISE and will be available in a few weeks. It replaces ACS,NGS,Profiler and NAC. One user database for all those 4 products seems like a good idea to me.

WCS 8 should be Lumos indeed. It's planned for this summer. I don't have more information.

Nicolas