We were able to complete a couple of major changes in advance of our students moving in.
The first is that we completed an upgrade to Aruba 8.1 (brave, I know). We have just under 1,300 APs running on it, mostly 2xx series with a handful of 3xx. We had to upgrade our controllers to a pair of HW-MM-5K mobility masters (we didn't have a suitable VMware environment to even try the virtual controllers), and a pair of 7240XM local controllers. We had original 7240 controllers at first, but we found that memory utilization jumped from 60% under 6.4, to > 90% in 8.1, so we went with the controller upgrade option as a low cost, quick turnaround fix. We've had some minor glitches on the way, especially in the initial setup, but overall has been pretty solid, and hasn't caused any user complaints. Our other major change was to create a new open wireless network that rolled up our previous onboarding and guest functionality, and also added in IoT capabilities, all backed by Clearpass. It took quite a bit of work to straighten out the authentication rules, even after having a vendor come in and help us set up the initial framework. We've seen lower uptake on the open network that we had expected - only around 200 out of 6,000 clients - but our best guess is that it's because we still provide on wired port per pillow, reducing the need for wireless on gaming and media devices. Honestly, though, our biggest question is why our peak connected users has actually gone down from this time last year. Previous we were holding steady a over 8,000 peak clients, but we haven't come anywhere near that yet. We're waiting to see if people just haven't gotten around to finish registering their devices, or if there's some other factor that just hasn't surfaced yet. Frank Sweetser Director of Network Operations Worcester Polytechnic Institute "For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong." - HL Mencken ________________________________ From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv <[email protected]> on behalf of Lee H Badman <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, August 25, 2017 9:22 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Move In/Opening Week- Any Problems? It might be beneficial to share notes in case other schools are hitting common problems. I’m wondering how everyone who is in the thick of it is faring with back-to-school? On this end, we are doing OK halfway to our expected total daily peak clients (we’re at 15K now high water mark). Our significant WLAN-related changes since end of Spring semester * Running 8.2.151 on our 8540s * Significant quantities of Wave 2 APs * ISE as RADIUS (only, no NAC, no onboarding) No changes to: * our guest WLAN (Clearpass/an Aruba controller pair) * onboarding (Cloudpath Wiz) * overall topology * open network in dorms for gadgets * non-use of AVC, it crapped out and never got solved after hundreds of hours with TAC Fears: * We haven’t yet hit the scale that will reveal problems with any of the newer stuff listed above Anyone else care to share? -Lee Lee Badman | Network Architect Certified Wireless Network Expert (#200) Information Technology Services 206 Machinery Hall 120 Smith Drive Syracuse, New York 13244 t 315.443.3003 f 315.443.4325 e [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> w its.syr.edu SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY syr.edu ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/discuss. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/discuss.
