WiFiTodd

“Never, Never, Never give up.” – Winston Churchill

A year ago I ordered a group of Cisco access points. I received 20 AIR-AP3702I-UXK9. Not looking too close, I plugged it up and….nothing. After doing a quick research, I learned that Cisco had shipped me a Cisco AP that could be configured for any regulatory domain depending on the geographic location of the AP. In the United Stats of America, we use the regulatory domain -A.

The configuration process can be completed by either Manual priming or Automatic priming. Manual priming requires you to use the Cisco Air Provision application and a cellular phone with a integrated GPS (Apple Iphone or Google Android phone). Automatic priming is completed by an UX AP that has already been successfully primed. The primed UX AP sends out a Beacon with the regulatory domain and country configuration in a encrypted segment of the 802.11 Beacon’s frame. The UX APs need to be in close RF proximity since it needs to be able to receive and demodulate the Beacon frame.

“Business doesn’t stand still while I play GPS Marco Polo with a bunch of APs to get them to work!” – me

I could never get the Manual priming process to work. I let the APs sit in a box. I had to move on and get deployments completed. Business doesn’t stand still while I play GPS Marco Polo with a bunch of APs to get them to work! I knew I would eventually come back to the box of 20 UX access points. I returned to work on the problem last night.

I downloaded the application (Ver 1.4) to my Apple Iphone 6 Plus (IOS 9.2.1 (13D15).

I downloaded the Cisco document “Cisco Aironet Universal AP Priming and Cisco AirProvision User Guide”.

Cisco Aironet Universal AP Priming and Cisco AirProvision User Guide

Finally, I did a search for Chris Avant’s blog article on the subject.

Chris Avants UX AP Universal Priming Blog

Between all these resources, I figured I could make this Manual priming work as Cisco intended. Nope. Didn’t work. I kept getting “Not connected to AP” or “Unauthorized 401” error when I used my CCO account or “Cisco” or default login.

Note: I didn’t get a screen shot of the “Unauthorized 401” error.

The work around is to either enable the Global Login credentials for the AP or to Override the Global Login credentials and set a Local Login for the AP. Easy enough process to complete.  I found this work-around while working with TAC and doing AP Level Debugs.

Connect to the SSID Universal, verify you have an IP Address, test connectivity by opening Safari and browse to Viking Kittens!

               

Open up the AirProvision App and enter the Local User Account. The Application will connect to the AP and provision it. Once the application has completed the provision process, the AP is in the correct regulatory domain. Click on the Audit tab for a nice summary of the AP.

               

If you quit out of the application, you will not be able to log back in with out disassociating from the WLAN and re-associating. Configure one UX AP manually. Connect all the others up at your desk and let them automatically provision each other.

I expect that Cisco will either change the AirProvision process completely or make their application more robust. Until that time, this information might come in handy if you run into this issue.