The ranting of an IT Professional » Wireless

CCDA

Jason Tramer — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:10:08 +0000

Passed my CCDA exam today! Overall having done professional level Cisco cert’s, going back to associate level wasn’t that hard at all. I have a very even mix of questions between Routing and Switching, Voice, Security, and Wireless, so know all of them well but it doesn’t go anywhere near the depth of professional level on any of them. A lot of IPv6 stuff so know that really well too.

Good luck!

Upgrade the firmware on a Cisco lightweight access point

Jason Tramer — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:56:02 +0000

Need to roll out a new firmware revision to all your access points connected to your controller? Maybe you need to convert some into autonomous mode?

Easy and simple way to accomplish this. Load up your IOS file onto a TFTP server and then connect to the CLI of your controller.

Enter this command for each AP:

config ap tftp-downgrade tftp-server-ip-address filename access-point-name

Your access point will download the image, update and reboot itself and you can do all this from the safety and comfort of your desk. Remember a good network admin is a lazy network admin.

Cisco 1411 Wireless bridge – Radio interface won’t come online

Jason Tramer — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:30:16 +0000

This gave me some issue the other day. I was setting up two Cisco 1411 wireless bridges to connect to each other for the first time. One was root bridge, the other set as non-root bridge.

After i set them up I was checking the web interface of the non-root bridge and the Radio interface was showing as disabled. I tried to re-enable it, but it wouldn’t come online. Logs show the interface was reset.

After a little research I found out this is actually normal. At the time the bridges were no point at each other and if the non-root bridge can not detect the root it disables it’s own radio interface. As soon as pointed them at each other the interface came back online.

AP’s not registering on Cisco Wireless controller 4400 series

Jason Tramer — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:34:44 +0000

I experienced this issue recently where I had a Cisco Wireless 4400 series Controller and some brand new 1140 series AP’s. The problem was this, the access points would connect to the controller, they would get IP addresses, and you would see them listed under the wireless section of the web GUI but the indicator light on them would never turn a solid green and they would not broadcast the SSID’s.

The issue as it turned out was firmware on the controller. This is a known issue with version 4 and below. We upgraded to version 6 and this resolved the issue.

Cisco adopting strategies to compete in the small business line

Jason Tramer — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:57:21 +0000

Cisco is almost synonymous with big business in the network infrastructure market but recently they have really been working to make themselves more friendly to the SMB market.

Here is a good article about that:

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/09/16/cisco_smb_rollout_sept_09/

Working at a consulting company that is a Cisco partner and has a large focus on small business I find that there are a lot of great Cisco products in the price range my client’s look for.

The ASA 5505 for example is a great little firewall with a lot of good features and price was is right on the mark and often cheaper then equivalent Watchguard and Sonicwall products. As well the UC500 Integrated services voip router is a great solution for a small business who wants a voice solution with a reasonable cost, particularly if they need a primary router/firewall and/or small wireless solution in any case.

WPA-TKIP is completely broken

Jason Tramer — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:48:24 +0000

Check it out:

http://jwis2009.nsysu.edu.tw/location/paper/A%20Practical%20Message%20Falsification%20Attack%20on%20WPA.pdf

This is serious stuff . If you are currently using this you should definitely switch to something more secure ASAP.

Wireless not working after HyperV install

Jason Tramer — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:46:49 +0000

I am running server 2008 on my laptop and decided to install HyperV so that I could have an XP VM.

As soon as I installed HyperV my wireless connection stopped working. Though the wireless connection is there in manage network connections it is missing when doing an IPconfig and won’t locate any networks.

I have since uninstalled hyperV, reinstalled both the wireless card driver and the wlan service and nothing has resolved this. I will likely have to reinstall my OS.

If you have 2008 on a laptop and decide to install hyperv fair thee warned.

WPA has been cracked!

Jason Tramer — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:52:06 +0000

http://www.itworld.com/security/57285/once-thought-safe-wpa-wi-fi-encryption-cracked

Read this article, this is pretty bad. Despite many of my vociferous objections about implementing wireless on your trusted network, many of my client’s are doing just that. Everyone loves the convienance of wireless tech but we always must remember that this is a security hole. Sure you can implement a ton of encryption to cover the hole but the hole is still there.

Troubleshooting wireless networks

Jason Tramer — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 19:42:28 +0000

Wireless networks are getting more and more common and with good reason, they are damn useful, particularly when you get a lot of guests or vendors who visit your office. However they can be an absolute pain in the butt to troubleshoot. Part of this is because in a 9 times of 10 the person installing it buys the cheapest linksys or d-link wireless router they can find and installs it with the standard settings so you end up have 15 networks in proximity all with the same name and all on the same channel. It also seems that some people don’t see the correlation between the 2.4 ghz router they bought and all those cordless phones in their office that say 2.4 ghz on them. Plus why don’t some people realize that security could be important. To quote one of my co-workers “God bless the people who don’t realize they should put some form of security on their wireless networks because otherwise I would have to pay for internet at home”, great for your neighbours, bad for your network.

So there is a bunch of stuff that can go wrong but how do you make it right? Well I like to use a little tool called Net Stumbler. A great tool which shows you all the networks in proximity, their names, which channel they are on, their signal strength, whether or not they are secure and what type encryption they are using. Take it from me, it is a god send when troubleshooting wireless network issues.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Network-Tools/Network-Monitoring/NetStumbler.shtml