Cisco WLC 6.0.182.0 gateway issues?
Posted July 4th, 2009 at 02:12 AM by GroundZero3
I upgraded our Cisco WLC 4404 to 6.0.182.0 tonight and I came up with a serious issue 
All my remote access points are showing up as offline (and yes they are online as I can see them through show cdp neighbors and ping their ip addresses). They don't even show up in the controller as connected. However the access points on the same subnet as the controller connected just fine. Apparently this seems to be a gateway issue on the controller? I can ping the management address on the local network just fine, however I cant not ping it from the remote networks (and yes routing is working fine) However something very interesting, if I go into the management interface and just press apply the I get a few ping requests (from the remote sites) from the ip but then it times out again. If i go into the access points section I see a few of the remote access points have joined and started to download the new IOS. However they disassociate again. How odd, guess I need to contact Cisco and see if they have any clues.
*Update 7/06/2009*
Contacted Cisco TAC, its very hard trying to talk to someone about the problem when they barely can understand you and you can barely understand them. The woman on the phone suggested I try the Option43 for the DHCP server, I continue to tell her that I cant ping the controller at all from the remote site!! I also told her that I never had to use the option43 before, and of course her response was it should have never worked in the first place.
If you put the Controller name into DNS, it works perfectly fine. On top of that, if no device can even ping the controller address, the option43 isnt going to fix anything. I'm still sticking to my guns that its an issue with the software and it not applying the the gateway to the controller.
7/7/09
Rebooted the controller this morning while pinging the management address from the remote site. Got one ping and then it times out again. Users are stating the wireless works fine, however several of the access points are still offline as they cant communicate to the controller. The best way to describe my issue is having a computer with a static address but not gateway address assigned. Locally everything works fine, however it the computer has no idea how to forward packets outside the subnet
8/17/2008
Oops forgot to update! Two issues came up:
First the Cisco 4400 has four 1 Gigabyte ethernet ports on the front. We are currently using two in a port channel for redundancy and speed. I added another port to the group and all of a sudden the remote sites could ping the controller. I need to do some more testing on why this is happening, I am still suspecting its the Cisco software.
Also Cisco decided to change the name of its LWAPP protocol to CAPWAP. I had to change the DNS entry from LWAPP.ad.xx.xxx.xxx to CAPWAP.ad.xxx.xx.xxx. I noticed this when I logged into the LWAPP access point and checked the logs (thank god Cisco finally implemented this) It seems TAC wasn't even aware of this change either (they also gave me LWAPP debug commands instead of CAPWAP)
So things are running now, like I said more testing needs to be done

All my remote access points are showing up as offline (and yes they are online as I can see them through show cdp neighbors and ping their ip addresses). They don't even show up in the controller as connected. However the access points on the same subnet as the controller connected just fine. Apparently this seems to be a gateway issue on the controller? I can ping the management address on the local network just fine, however I cant not ping it from the remote networks (and yes routing is working fine) However something very interesting, if I go into the management interface and just press apply the I get a few ping requests (from the remote sites) from the ip but then it times out again. If i go into the access points section I see a few of the remote access points have joined and started to download the new IOS. However they disassociate again. How odd, guess I need to contact Cisco and see if they have any clues.
*Update 7/06/2009*
Contacted Cisco TAC, its very hard trying to talk to someone about the problem when they barely can understand you and you can barely understand them. The woman on the phone suggested I try the Option43 for the DHCP server, I continue to tell her that I cant ping the controller at all from the remote site!! I also told her that I never had to use the option43 before, and of course her response was it should have never worked in the first place.
If you put the Controller name into DNS, it works perfectly fine. On top of that, if no device can even ping the controller address, the option43 isnt going to fix anything. I'm still sticking to my guns that its an issue with the software and it not applying the the gateway to the controller. 7/7/09
Rebooted the controller this morning while pinging the management address from the remote site. Got one ping and then it times out again. Users are stating the wireless works fine, however several of the access points are still offline as they cant communicate to the controller. The best way to describe my issue is having a computer with a static address but not gateway address assigned. Locally everything works fine, however it the computer has no idea how to forward packets outside the subnet
8/17/2008
Oops forgot to update! Two issues came up:
First the Cisco 4400 has four 1 Gigabyte ethernet ports on the front. We are currently using two in a port channel for redundancy and speed. I added another port to the group and all of a sudden the remote sites could ping the controller. I need to do some more testing on why this is happening, I am still suspecting its the Cisco software.
Also Cisco decided to change the name of its LWAPP protocol to CAPWAP. I had to change the DNS entry from LWAPP.ad.xx.xxx.xxx to CAPWAP.ad.xxx.xx.xxx. I noticed this when I logged into the LWAPP access point and checked the logs (thank god Cisco finally implemented this) It seems TAC wasn't even aware of this change either (they also gave me LWAPP debug commands instead of CAPWAP)
So things are running now, like I said more testing needs to be done
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