Why clients protocol only shows 802.11a or 802.11g

[RabbitSF]

Our school has the WCL 5508 ver 7.6. with 25 mixed APs of 3702 (mainly), 1142, 1242 and 1131. All APs are using the power injectors instead of PoE through switches.

When I go to Monitor-->Clients, I can only either 802.11a or 802.11g protocol for all the connected clients, none of them says 802.11n. Most of the clients are Macbook Air and iPads.

Any idea? Thanks.

[Moin Ilyas]

Please check your encryption type being used.

If the 802.11n AP and a system with an 802.11n Wireless LAN Mini-PCI Express Adapter are configured to data encryption other than AES, your data rate will automatically downgrade to the legacy IEEE 802.11a, b, and g since other encryption types are disallowed by the IEEE 802.11n standard. To maximize the performance benefit of 802.11n, the AP and system must be configured to AES encryption.

Check if that works.

Cheers.

[RabbitSF]

Hi Moin,

Thanks very much for the reply. But I am still not quite sure how I can change those encryption parameters. Would you please point that out more straight forward?

I did go to each WLAN's security configuration page to set the layer 2 use WPA2 policy only and set WPA2 encryption to AES only (no TKIP).  Is this something that I should do or is there anything else?

The controller got some many parameters and I totally got confused sometimes. I am sorry. 

Thanks much again!

[Moin Ilyas]

Hello,

Please refer the following link for configuring layer 2 security, under WPA1 and WPA2 and share results.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/7-0MR1/configuration/guide/wlc_cg70MR1/cg_wlan.html#pgfId-1161851

Thanks.

[RabbitSF]

The guide from the link has WPA/TKIP checked which does not seem to match what you suggested.

As I mentioned, I did change the layer 2 security to WPA2/AES only. But it did not help, they are still the same protocol, nothing changed. 

[Moin Ilyas]

Hello,

Please read Step 6 under 'Using the GUI to Configure WPA1+WPA2' tab.

Step 6 Select the AES check box to enable AES data encryption or the TKIP check box to enable TKIP data encryption for WPA1, WPA2, or both. The default values are TKIP for WPA1 and AES for WPA2.

[RabbitSF]

Moin,

As I mentioned, I did that already. See attached picture. But it did not work.

Any other thought?

[Moin Ilyas · Accepted solution]

Well, I would suggest you to please have a look at your 802.11n Configuration.

Please refer the following link and share results.

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/7-4/configuration/guides/consolidated/b_cg74_CONSOLIDATED/b_cg74_CONSOLIDATED_chapter_0101.html#ID1326

Thanks.

[RabbitSF]

OK. Got some progress. I went to change the WMM to Allowed, now they show 802.11bn or 802.11a. Why it's a "b" in the 802.11bn? Is that because I have 802.11b/g enabled? (See attached) Can I disable the 802.11b/g and leave 802.11g over there? 

Thanks much for all the quick replies.

[Moin Ilyas]

Note   

If the 802.11n client associates to an 802.11a radio that has 802.11n enabled, then the client type shows as 802.11a/n. If the 802.11n client associates to an 802.11b/g radio with 802.11n enabled, then the client type shows as 802.11b/n.

Please follow the following link for better understanding:

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/7-4/configuration/guides/consolidated/b_cg74_CONSOLIDATED/b_cg74_CONSOLIDATED_chapter_010000000.html#ID4535

Hope that helps.

[RabbitSF]

Alright. I got all questions answered. Thank you very much for all the replies! I really appreciated your help, Moin!