Saturday, January 15, 2011

Surveying with a 3502 (followup post)

As a followup to my previous post on surveying with Cisco 3502 series Access Points, I've been playing around with a few options that ultimately get the job done. As you may recall, the Cisco 3502i Access Points have different radios in them than then 1142 Access Point making the 1142 an unsuitable substitute for a site survey for those customers looking for a literal real-world picture of what a 3502 deployment will look like. Because I have several customers that won't accept an 1142 substitute survey for a 3502i deployment, I've been wrestling with the best way to get this done.
  Since there was no autonomous image available, the best alternative has been to join a 3502 up to a controller, put it in H-REAP mode with a static IP address and use the same IP address as the Access Points default gateway. This prevented the AP from feeling stranded and rebooting every 15 minutes (hard to do a survey when that's happening).
  Recently a little birdie from Cisco called me (you know who you are and thanks!) and let me know that the 1262 Autonomous code has been posted to CCO and that since the 1262 and the 3502i/e share radio chipsets, there is a good chance that the Autonomous image would work across all three models. I decided to give it a go and here's what that attempt looked like:

Tools used:
1) PC with it's IP address set to 10.0.0.2/24
2) running a TFTP server
3) the following IOS images from CCO: ap3g1-k9w7-tar.124-25d.JA.tar (6.5M) and ap3g1-rcvk9w8-tar.124-23c.JA.tar (2.3M)
4) A 3502 Access Point with a local power supply attached to the PC and a console connection to the AP to watch the fun!

To convert to autonomous image:
Step 1) Duplicate your ap3g1-k9w7-tar.124-25d.JA.tar image (the larger of the two) and rename it to ap3g1-k9w7-tar.default. Place this file in the root of your TFTP server.
Step 2) Depress the MODE button on your AP and power it up - release the MODE button when the LED on front turns red.
Step 3) Watch the image download
It should look something like:

button is pressed, wait for button to be released...
button pressed for 22 seconds
process_config_recovery: set IP address and config to default 10.0.0.1
process_config_recovery: image recovery
image_recovery: Download default IOS tar image tftp://255.255.255.255/ap3g1-k9w7-tar.default


Unable to create temp dir "flash:/update"
examining image...
extracting info (283 bytes)
Image info:
    Version Suffix: k9w7-.124-25d.JA
    Image Name: ap3g1-k9w7-mx.124-25d.JA
    Version Directory: ap3g1-k9w7-mx.124-25d.JA
    Ios Image Size: 5673472
    Total Image Size: 6502912
    Image Feature: WIRELESS LAN
    Image Family: AP3G1
    Wireless Switch Management Version: 7.0.94.21
Extracting files...
ap3g1-k9w7-mx.124-25d.JA/ (directory) 0 (bytes)
ap3g1-k9w7-mx.124-25d.JA/html/ (directory) 0 (bytes)

Once the image completes downloading, your AP should reboot. At that point, you should have a fully functional 3502i/e Access Point (less Spectrum Expert functionality of course) running autonomous code that you can then use to survey with!

Once you're done with your site survey, if you no longer need your survey AP to be running autonomous code and want to put it back to lightweight mode, you can do the following:

To convert to lightweight image:
Step 1) Duplicate your ap3g1-rcvk9w8-tar.124-23c.JA.tar image (the smaller of the two) and rename it to ap3g1-k9w7-tar.default. Place this file in the root of your TFTP server.
Step 2) Depress the MODE button on your AP and power it up - release the MODE button when the LED on front turns red.
Step 3) Watch the image download
It should look something like:

Waiting for PHY auto negotiation to complete... done
Ethernet speed is 1000 Mb - FULL duplex
button is pressed, wait for button to be released...
button pressed for 21 seconds
process_config_recovery: set IP address and config to default 10.0.0.1
process_config_recovery: image recovery
image_recovery: Download default IOS tar image tftp://255.255.255.255/ap3g1-k9w7-tar.default


Unable to create temp dir "flash:/update"
examining image...
extracting info (274 bytes)
Image info:
    Version Suffix: rcvk9w8-
    Image Name: ap3g1-rcvk9w8-mx
    Version Directory: ap3g1-rcvk9w8-mx
    Ios Image Size: 2284032
    Total Image Size: 2284032
    Image Feature: WIRELESS LAN|LWAPP|RECOVERY
    Image Family: AP3G1
    Wireless Switch Management Version: 7.0.94.21
Extracting files...
ap3g1-rcvk9w8-mx/ (directory) 0 (bytes)
extracting ap3g1-rcvk9w8-mx/ap3g1-rcvk9w8-mx (2281426 bytes).....................................

Once that completes, your AP should be 'back to normal'. If you find any residual config on the AP, once it joins back up to your controller, you may want to do a 'Clear All Config' from the AP page.

Some things to note are:
1) Most Windows installations will hide your file extensions by default. Don't forget to remove the .tar extension from your file names when you're moving them around else your TFTP server may throw a 'file not found' error.
2) Watch your console connection. I've seen it ask for the filename of ap3g1-k9w7-tar.default as well as c3500-k9w7-tar.default.  Just watch for the image name that it's looking for and rename your image accordingly.

14 comments:

  1. Samuel, thanks for your post ! This way, I'll trade the old 1252s for 1262s during surveys.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey, that's awesome, thanks!

    Any ideas if autonomous code will be released for the 3502s?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nate,
    This blog has been superseded by sc-wifi.com but in answer to your question, I doubt an autonomous image for the 3502s will ever be released. One of the significant benefits of Clean Air is to mitigate sources of interference by changing channels holistically in an environment. Without a controller, this is impossible.

    ReplyDelete
  4. There will be a 3500 site survey image released pretty soon.

    One other thing that I discovered is that I had issues TFTPing the image to the AP with some TFTP software. TFTPD64 worked best for me.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hai Sam...thank you very much for your post, but I had a problem, I already turn of the anti virus and my firewall. But when my ap in red condition and I release the button, the ap coudn't find the source file (my laptop couldn't ping to 10.0.0.1, the default ap ip address). Did you had any suggestion?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi,

    Can you share the firmware with us? We need to do some survey by using the 3502e...

    Thanks a millions !!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. The firmware is only available from Cisco if you are part of their beta

    ReplyDelete
  8. Alex,
    The code is available from CCO as a production ready image for a 1262 as described in the introduction to the blog post. I cannot share this code as it would be against the licensing terms of downloading the code.

    Phil,
    If there is an ongoing beta, you would certainly be bound by the terms of the NDA you agreed to and disclosing information about said beta would be in violation of those terms and generally unwise in a public forum (even declaring it's existence). If you are receiving data from someone else that claims to be in a beta, them sharing information with you is also certainly in violation of the terms of their beta agreement and would also be unwise to share in a public forum.
    -Sam

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  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hi I found your site by mistake when i was searching yahoo for this acne issue, I must say your site is really helpful I also love the design, its amazing!. I don’t have the time at the moment to fully read your site but I have bookmarked it and also add your RSS feeds. I will be back in a day or two. thanks for a great site. wireless mapping fence

    ReplyDelete
  11. Have a question..

    I got 3502i AP's from my previous job.
    I wanted to set them up for my home network. I upgraded those with Autonomous iOS and configure it without any issue.
    Now the problem is if I connect that AP directly to my AT&T Uverse router it does not work, I can see SSID but when I connect it says No Internet.
    If I connect my old Netgear WiFi router to AT&T Uverse and then connect AP then it works like a charm and I don't see any issue or problem, in fact it gives me better speed.

    * AT&T Uverse + 3502i AP = No Internet Connection
    * AT&T Uverse + Netgear Router + 3502i AP = Works Perfectly fine

    (BTW I am using PoE Adapter)

    Can anyone please tell me why I am not getting internet while connecting directly with AT&T Uverse router?
    I just done want an additional router in between.

    Any help would highly appreciated.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hi! Please be aware that this blog has been retired. I now live over at http://www.sc-wifi.com/. Having said that, the issue you have is that consumer grade devices combine a router and Wireless Access Point in one unit. You will need to have a device that does routing and commonly NAT'ing in a typical home environment. Stated differently, Cisco APs don't route (unless you're talking specifically about with a WLC and OfficeExtend). If your ISP only gives you a single IP address, your AP is likely taking that. If you only have a single device you want on your Wi-Fi, you could certainly disable IP connectivity on the AP and your first Wi-Fi client should get the address, but not having a router/firewall in place between your client and the public Internet is generally considered a bad idea. I hope that helps - good luck and hit me up on my other blog if you want more info!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the reply. I saved the new address in case I have any question in future.

      Delete
  13. Many time, I was trying to access www.mywifiext.net, But unable to access the website http://www.mywifiext.net to set up your wireless extender, you might receive an error message or be unable to connect to the site. After that, I got a site mywifiext-net.us and found that mywifiext.net is not a regular Internet website. It is a local web address used to open the settings (genie or Smart Wizard) of a NETGEAR wireless range extender. Finally I was successfully configure my Www.Mywifiext.Net Ex6200 Setup

    ReplyDelete