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Wireless Alert

I would like to create an alert for when the wireless signal is weak. It's possible?

  • Weak signal can be relative to the type of wireless device being monitored, as well as the type on interference causing the weak signal, and the number of concentrated active wireless devices near an access point.

    With all that in mind I'm sure a value could be used to identify and monitor a weak signal, much like in a wireless heat map, especially if such a value exists within the wireless device via SNMP.

    What kind of access points would you be monitoring?

  • Have you identified a MIB that gives this information?  A MIBwalk might be a good to identify which MIB if vendor documentation doesn't help.

    Are you already successfully polling the data you would alert on?

  • The question is very vague.   Are you looking for when the wireless signal is weak on a wireless bridge?    Or are you looking for when the wireless signal is weak on an access-point?   If an access-point, are you looking for when wireless signals in general for the AP are weak, possibly signaling a problem with the AP?   Or are you looking for when the wireless signal to an individual client is weak?    If for an individual client, do you want to know when any clients signal is weak, or a specific client?

    I can see the wireless bridge weak signal to be very useful.     However, I don't see much use for alerting on a weak signal from an individual client on an AP.  Unless you have a very small network, you're going to be getting an awful lot of alerts.   It's part of life with wireless networks for signals to go both strong and weak, a normal part of operations.

    But, defining the actual goal you have further might help in figuring out the solution...

  • Hi, was just browsing through for a similar query I have and I landed up here.

    I have started managing a new network where we they have deployed Cisco 5500 Wireless Controllers with CISCOAIR-CAP3502I-S-K9 and CAP3602 Light Weight Access Points. They do not have a centralized Wireless Managing Tool like Cisco WCS and Prime and I am trying to see if I can make use of Solarwinds NPM 11.0 for the same. I would need to monitor my Wifi network for any interference and the traffic loss that is happening. I know these features are in built in Cisco Prime and there should be a way we can get this done through Solarwinds. Kindly help.

    Thank you!

  • Configure SNMP communities for your AP's with the 5500 controllers and I believe you should also set them up to send SNMP traps to Orion.  Add the individual AP's in to Orion. 

    You should get quite a bit simply doing that.   But, you can also create maps of your sites using Network Atlas, drop the AP's you've managed on to those maps and you can get wireless heat maps based off of those...

    Should get you started at least.

  • Yes Craig, I acknowledge that monitoring signal strength for a single user would not be useful enough. I can already see the same on the RSSI value on solarwinds.

    What I am more looking at is the overall signal strength of the wireless bridge.

    I have configured the SNMP on the controllers and I am already pulling up the data on Solarwinds. The APs are LWAPs (unmanaged APs) and they cannot be configured with any SNMP. Instead, Solarwinds must pull all the required data from the Cisco Controllers which manage these APs.

    The below are few instances that I owuld like to focus first:

    • wired traffic stats

    • congestion

    • interference levels

    • signal strenghts and drops if any

    • client count threshold breach

    • client mac address

    • radius accounting and authentication for particular SSID

    • co-channel interferance problems

    • ascertaining model numbers for the various APs

    Kindly help.

    Thank you!

  • Sorry, been buried in Aerohive recently, which even though they are "lightweight" you can manage via SNMP in Orion.   Didn't like them at first, but I think I'm actually preferring the Aerohive AP's to the Cisco in many ways now.   Much easier to work with IMHO...

    But, back to Cisco.  Some of that stuff you do get from traps on the controller I think.  Go to "Management" and "SNMP".   Browse through the settings to see exactly what you can/can't get and where to set it up to send your traps.   Its under "trap controls" that you can control what traps you get.   You'll have to experiment on what you get.   "Trap Logs" should help a bit on what SW trap receiver will see.    Oh, and don't forget, just sending the traps won't really do much, you have to fiddle with the trap receiver on Orion to interpret and do something based on them, like send Alerts if necessary...

    Beyond that, I don't really see much info contained in the "Wireless_AccessPoints" database in Orion.   Basic stuff like the name of the AP, IP Address, # of clients, status and traffic info.  Nothing on model #'s and such.  I'm suspecting that this is due to this information not being revealed by the controller itself, not a fault in Orion.  You can put in a feature request to get things like this added, but it might be helpful if you can find out if this is revealed via SNMP by doing an SNMPwalk or something similar on the controller first.   If it's not there, there probably isn't a whole lot they can do.    Was also thinking maybe that stuff is stored in the NCM config, but I don't see it there either, nor do I believe NCM inventory process reveals this info either.

    You can do the heatmaps though, rather than having individual AP's managed via SNMP you would choose your controller and the AP's connected should be listed under there which you can place on your maps.

    HTH!!

  • Thank you! That was way too helpful.

    Let me check on the configuration of SNMP on the Access Points and see if that helps.

    As suggested, I will try tweaking the traps being shared by the Cisco Controller and see how is my Solarwinds interpreting it.

    May be as you say, this works without any tweaking as Prime and Controller as Cisco products.

    Thank you again!!