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How to add APs managed by Cisco WLC C9800-L-F to Wireless Heat Map

Hi All,

NPM version 2025.4.0

C9800-L-F IOS-XE version 17.15.03

Managed APs CW9176I

We've recently replaced WLC from Cisco 5520 to Cisco C9800-L-F, and tried to update the Solarwinds Wireless Heat Map.
In the previous WLC model, I was able to add managed APs to the heat map showing their locations etc, however, with the new WLC I'm not able to do so.
WLC is managed with snmp v3 and when I go to Dashboards >Network > Wireless, I can see all the managed APs. Tried to "manage as node" using the same snmpv3 setting for managing the WLC, but test fails for authentication and unable to add them. This is somewhat expected as these APs are meant to be "light weight" and should be managed from WLC.

I saw some thwack post saying to right click the WLC and select "Show related entities", but this just shows physical modules installed and not showing any managed APs.

Also saw another post to enable OIDs Wireless OIDs polled in NPM

While not enabled, we can see some info already and not sure if this would help?

How do I go about adding the APs to the map so that we know which AP is located where etc and better manage them going forward?

Many thanks.

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wireless heat maps

cisco wireless controller

Accepted answers

All comments

akanechan

OK, so I can either run discovery from WLC or manage AP as nodes, once added as nodes I can use them in the heat map. Only thing is that since snmp cannot be used for APs and icmp only it just gets ip addresses so I had to update the node details manually.

stuartd

Be aware that the heatmap is a "once and done".

It is not a "living" tool showing your coverage, which is what a heatmap should do. e.g. if you setup and generate your heatmap then it is purely a snapshot of that point in time. If, subsequently, an AP or two go offline it will show those APs as down, but your coverage map will not change.

akanechan

Thanks, @stuartd, yup. I'm aware that the heatmap is a snapshot of the it's taken the signal reading. I just wanted to use that to record where all APs are located in the office buildings. The process of adding the APs to the map was different from the previous WLC, and also after discovery I was only seeing the ip addresses of the managed APs and had to manually assign the AP names and found the whole process a bit annoying/too involved :D