ASSOCIATING LWAPP AP with WLC via CLI

Welcome to the world of Cisco Wireless.

Consider a home lab / a small office scenario, where you don't have fancy tools like DNS, DHCP etc. that make things really simple. (Either you don't want to complicate things or you simply can't afford it - well that's not the purpose of this post!!!!)

All you have is maybe a couple of L2 / L3 switches, an LWAPP AP and a Cisco WLC (4400, 5500 series).


Now, you know the basic steps that an LWAPP AP goes through, for discovering and associating with a WLC, which include a simple Broadcast / pre-configuration / DHCP Option 43, DNS, OTAP etc.

Let's assume that we have just purchased a brand new LWAPP AP, which obviously does not have any information about our WLC. Moreover, to rule out WLC discovery via broadcast, let's assume that the WLC and the AP are in different subnets.


Now, how do we associate the AP manually with WLC ??

Let's connect to the AP's console port and get the CLI access.

AP0023.0410.4aea# lwapp ap controller ip address 10.10.10.1

(10.10.10.1 obviously being the Management interface IP address of the WLC)


Verification:

AP0023.0410.4aea#show lwapp client config
configMagicMark 0xF1E2D3C4
chkSumV2 46073
chkSumV1 17487
swVer 4.2.130.0
adminState ADMIN_ENABLED(1)
name AP0023.0410.4aea
location default location
group name
mwarName (these are the primary, secondary, tertiary controllers)
<skip output>
ApMode Local
Discovery Timer 10 secs
Heart Beat Timer 30 secs
Led State Enabled 1
<skip output.>
Configured Switch 1 Addr 10.10.10.1
<.../...>


Please Note: You can't use the above command if you already have the AP associated with some WLC. It will show an ERROR message.