My CCNA Wireless Journal: November 2018

Cisco has announced the End-of-Life (EoL) for the Cisco WLC 2504 this year so we're getting the new Cisco 3504 wireless controller. Below are photos of the WLC 3504 and this is a helpful link for the information on chassis ports and LEDs

I had to troubleshoot a brand new WLC 3504 and for some reason the 1852 AP wasn't able to join the wireless controller even though the country (for the AP) and date/time were correctly configured. The logs showed a looping CAPWAP State: DTLS Teardown error when consoled to one of the AP.

[*10/30/2018 02:57:49.0222] CAPWAP State: DTLS Teardown

[*10/30/2018 02:57:49.0322] Dropping dtls packet since session is not established. Peer 202.7.3.4-5246, Local 202.7.3.30-5264, conn (nil)

[*10/30/2018 02:57:53.8807]

[*10/30/2018 02:57:53.8807] CAPWAP State: Discovery

[*10/30/2018 02:57:53.8807] IP DNS query for CISCO-CAPWAP-CONTROLLER.local.net

[*10/30/2018 02:57:53.9206] Discovery Request sent to 202.7.3.4, discovery type STATIC_CONFIG(1)

[*10/30/2018 02:57:53.9206] Discovery Request sent to 255.255.255.255, discovery type UNKNOWN(0)

[*10/30/2018 02:57:53.9206] Discovery Response from 202.7.3.4

[*10/30/2018 02:57:53.9406] Discovery Response from 202.7.3.4

[*10/30/2018 02:58:03.0000]

[*10/30/2018 02:58:03.0000] CAPWAP State: DTLS Setup

[*10/30/2018 02:58:03.0399]

[*10/30/2018 02:58:03.0399] CAPWAP State: Join

[*10/30/2018 02:58:03.0399] Sending Join request to 202.7.3.4 through port 5264

[*10/30/2018 02:58:47.0262] Discarding msg CAPWAP_WTP_EVENT_REQUEST(type 9) in CAPWAP state: Join(5).

[*10/30/2018 02:59:00.0722]

[*10/30/2018 02:59:00.0722] CAPWAP State: DTLS Teardown

[*10/30/2018 02:59:00.0922] Dropping dtls packet since session is not established. Peer 202.7.3.4-5246, Local 202.7.3.30-5264, conn (nil)

There were no APs that have joined the WLC per checking on the Monitor dashboard and under Wireless > Access Points.

In order for the APs to join the WLC, you'll need to activate the ap_count license. Go to Management > Software Activation > Licenses > click ap_count (hyperlink).

Set the License Status to Activate (default) > click Set Status.

An End User License Agreement (EULA) page will pop-up. Click I Accept.

The APs started to join afterwards. The box comes with the AP Adder License (or Entitlement). You'll need to specify the AP count under MANAGEMENT > Software Activation > Licenses > License Count > Add > type a number > Set Count. You'll be prompted again to accept the EULA.

For this scenario, I ordered a WLC 3504 with 15 AP license.