Wireless AP Monitoring Enhancements

We need Wireless Heatmaps for Extreme Networks Access Points in Solarwinds, Cisco is only supported. That is not enough for the hole world

Thanks for the response Richard but in some  of our environments we are handed environments that don't allow direct ccess to teh AP either ICMP or SNMP.

This is desperately needed.  Having to log into each of my controllers and generate an inventory list is a pain when you have a hundred controllers.

Also, please make sure that the Serial Number is returned FROM THE CHASSIS and not the PCB. 

Having worked with wireless for many years I have found that the root of this reporting in the SNMP values shown by the devices. For example if you are polling the controller and it is providing the information on the APs you may not have the type of AP sent via standard SNMP OID so something  custom may need to be configured, if it is even data the the controller will share.

I prefer to poll the APs directly, but some systems and configurations may not allow for that. If you can poll the individual APs building custom pollers (via universal device poller) is not very difficult at all and you can get exactly what you are looking for. (as long as the device is pollable and advertises what you are looking for)

I am looking for an option to provide to keep the Thin APs in Unmanaged mode, during a maintenance. Getting lot of requests.

bumping again for visibility...

Can't believe almost 6yrs later this topic has still not been actioned by Solarwinds.

Clearly they don't look at these pages that often but just in case, BUMP.

This is a pretty old post, but a lot of it is still relevant. The current state of Wireless monitoring needs to be reviewed and reinvented (IMHO).

The list of requests above, a new one, and my adds:

• Make Machine Type of access point, the actual Machine Type and not the Machine Type of the Wireless Controller.
  • This still has not been addressed
• Make Access points manageable objects without license penalty which can be individually added to a Network Atlas Map. Not just adding an Access point as an ICMP node without advanced information such as clients, RSSI, etc.
  • This is being somewhat addressed with the Heatmaps. I believe Heatmaps could also be improved, but all those requests are in various FRs already.
• Create custom properties for each access point so I can enter custom details about the Access Point like location information.
  • At least in Cisco-land, there is a description field in the controller for each AP, can this info be pulled in without creating a custom field? Although, custom fields on APs could also be very helpful for so many other reasons.
• Access point visibility on switches.
  • Unless the device is actually a monitored element in NPM, you can't get the connection info...this request is directly related to "Make Access points manageable objects" above
• Create Dependency where access point has a Parent of the switch to which it is attached. (courtesy of cbaser)
  • Also related to "Make Access points manageable objects" above since only a monitored element can be included in a dependency setup
• Similar to the DNS redundancy configuration in IPAM, can we add "redundant" WLCs? This way when an AP moves from 1 controller to another, it can be gray on 1 WLC and green on the other without deleting APs and data, then creating a new AP on the secondary WLC.

Another reason to reinvent is because various vendor controllers do things differently. Wireless could probably be it's very own Orion module because of all the various ways vendors are doing thing. Even within vendors, there are differences (traditional Cisco vs Meraki).

Just my 5 cents on this, but every opinion matters and can only help the cause, right?

D

Since my orifinal posting of this we have switched from Aruba - boo hiss over to Ruckus Wireless - Yippie, yeah, "you're my hero" (just some of the comments that I have heard - yes, it's working a million times better but I don't want to exaggerate so I'll just say 999,999x better)

With the Ruckus I have created universal pollers that allow me to reach into every AP and get any statistic I need.

Bumped it, but honestly, we do not do any wireless.