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Aruba wireless client count discrepancy

we have 2 aruba controllers that i am trying to get aggregate client counts from. the counts i get with swql don't jive with data gathered elsewhere.

at the moment one controller reports 152 clients and the other 157 when logging into them. i've created a UnDP to poll these device and the data it reports matches what i see in the controller gui so all seems good there.

with swql, there seems to be multiple ways of gathering this data and with each i'm getting only 159 clients total.

SELECT sum(Clients) as qty FROM Orion.Packages.Wireless.AccessPoints

SELECT sum(Clients) as qty FROM Orion.Packages.Wireless.Interfaces

SELECT count(ssid) as qty FROM Orion.Packages.Wireless.Clients

the built-in wireless summary page in SW reports the same thing i'm getting with swql

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Accepted answers

bgoulet

after many months working with Aruba and Solarwinds the method for SolarWinds pulling the data and the incorrect Aruba client counts have been determined. i'll leave this here for anyone else who might have the same issue and stumbles upon this post.

SolarWinds
------------
#this SNMP table contains client entries
oid_wlsxUserEntry = '1.3.6.1.4.1.14823.2.2.1.4.1.2.1.3'
#an example entry showing the client ID piece in parenthesis
.1.3.6.1.4.1.14823.2.2.1.4.1.2.1.3.(18.6.224.31.211.200).172.19.15.228 = STRING: someuser@gmail.com

#this SNMP table contains mappings of client IDs to wireless interface IDs
oid_staReceiveRate = '1.3.6.1.4.1.14823.2.2.1.1.2.2.1.9'
#an example entry showing the client ID and interface ID in parenthesis
.1.3.6.1.4.1.14823.2.2.1.1.2.2.1.9.(18.6.224.31.211.200).(32.166.205.12.79.208) = INTEGER: 13

#this SNMP table contains the wireless interface IDs
oid_wlanAPBssidNumAssociatedStations = '1.3.6.1.4.1.14823.2.2.1.5.2.1.7.1.12'
#an example with the interface ID in paranthesis
.1.3.6.1.4.1.14823.2.2.1.5.2.1.7.1.12.32.166.205.200.196.252.1.(32.166.205.12.79.208) = GAUGE32: 1

Solarwinds will query these tables and then correlate that a user entry maps to a staReceiveRate entry which maps to a wlanAPBssidNumAssociatedStations entry. If SolarWinds cannot correlate a user actually maps to a wireless interface then the client is discarded as not actually connected to the network. using Python i was able to replicate this logic and get the same valid client count as solarwinds reports.

Aruba
------------
Aruba discovered 2 things contributing to the significantly higher client count on their equipment

1) many clients support ipv6 even though we don't use it on our network. those clients auto-assign an ipv6 address to themselves when they connect to the wireless network. Aruba counts those ipv6 addresses as valid client entries meaning many clients are double counted. Solarwinds doesn't count ipv6 clients.

2) we have some Aruba UXI sensors. these sensors periodically connect to the network, perform some tests, and disconnect again. for whatever reason the Aruba controller isn't flushing out the stale entries for the sensors so in the user table you can see the MAC address of the sensor associated with a dozen or so different IP addresses. since these are old sessions, SolarWinds cannot correlate them to a wireless interface ID and therefore doesn't count them. Aruba engineering is working on an update to resolve this issue

All comments

3wal

Try this query to check the last time the entity you're querying was updated, UnDP will retrieve information via SNMP based on the OIDs that you've defined. The Orion entities uses different methods to pull data and feed the tables.

SELECT FirstUpdate, LastUpdate FROM Orion.Packages.Wireless.AccessPoints
WHERE ControllerName LIKE 'yourControllerName'

bgoulet

the WAPS on both controllers report a last update in the past couple minutes

bgoulet

do we know how the orion entities pull this data vs the SNMP OID the UnDP uses?

bgoulet

Aruba
------------
Aruba discovered 2 things contributing to the significantly higher client count on their equipment