Monitor APs on WLC 4400 & 5508

You could adjust your alerting logic so that when status is unknown it can trigger an alert.  However the way I monitor my AP's is that I have created an ICMP poller for the IP of each AP in my network which has worked well for me in keeping track of when they go down.

Ryan,

I have setup up./down alerts based on traps from the WLC , speciffically AIRESPACE-WIRELESS-MIB:bsnAPDisassociated and AIRESPACE-WIRELESS-MIB:bsnAPAssociated

These were both helpful answers and if I need I will fall back to one of these solutions.

I was hoping that someone is using a Cisco Wireless Controller and is alerting off the Wireless Controller Node in ORION (Specifically Thin Wireless Access Point (Canned alert) status) and has experienced my situation.

If not I will definitely give these two solutions a shot.

This is the answer I received from a Solar Winds engineer/technician:

"However, there is a workaround for this that after asking an application engineer about this situation... You can set up the alert on the thin APs, to Alert you when the AP status is equal to "Unknown".

So basically what happens before an AP "Disappears" or gets removed from NPM, for only one polling cycle, the AP will go into an Unknown State. So this gives you enough time to have an alert set to alert you when an AP goes into Unknown. This will only be in Unknown for one polling cycle, so don't put a delay on the alert. Try this out and see if this does the trick for you."

I have created an alert on this condition and it works like a champ, but it is very limited and not very robust.  It will let me know when an AP drops off the WLC, but it does not alert me when it re-associates back to the WLC.  It seems, if I can get it to work, that Ralphr may have the best answer.  I will be requesting a feature request to make the "out-of-box" alerting/monitoring more robust.

Correction to the previous post.  I forgot to set an email action for the trigger reset.  When the AP status changes to "UP" (re-associates with the

WLC) it will send the alert.

I have been having this issue for about a year and a half now. (http://thwack.solarwinds.com/message/156735#156735) I was hoping with the last release that it would work better but it is still not great.  I too would like to be doing these alreats, but also would like to be able to look at the webpage and see that yes AP*** is down.  What use is a monitoring system that just removes the devices onces it goes down? Imagine Solarwinds doing this with routers and switches they would be out of 95% of environments before their next maintenance renewals.  With 1000 APs monitoring each one on its own is not a good option either, these are DHCP assigned thin APs connecting to a controller and should be monitored as such. 

Is there a better resolution to this now that 10.4.2 is here?

Debbi

Any news yet on a better solution. I have this issue with my current NPM Solution and would love to know how to best monitor my thin WAP's.

Thanks.

Just enabled his alert in 11.5 as well.

If the WLC goes down you get a down alert for it along with one for each thin AP.  I see that you can alert on "Wireless Controller" in the trigger conditions but I do not see where you can say status='UP' which is what I want to incorporate into my thin AP alert but from what I am seeing you cant select status when alerting on Wireless Controller.  Am I missing something?

The alert trigger would read like below...

Wireless Access point - Wireless Type Description = Thin

Wireless Access Point - Status = Down

AND

Wireless Controller = Status = Up

Hi shack​, there are always 2 conditions, trigger conditions and reset condition, you need to add a condition in to your reset that when an AP/WC status is up, reset the condition and send u and email that the AP/WC is UP. I hope this helps.