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Mike Albano

Archive of classic posts • Wireless, route, switch stuff.

Channelization & OBSS Impact

Why do I blog? Well, here's a good example.  Forcing myself to research at a level I might not ordinarily do, in order to not publish inaccuracie...

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WiFi Client Capabilities

clients.mikealbano.com If it's not obvious, the capabilities of clients using the network directly impacts the WiFi design. Among the swath of 'option...

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How many AP's do I need?

...or "How many clients can I put on an AP?". These two questions, more than most, will get you an "it depends" answer. There is a hard limit on 'numb...

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Python, Linux & WLAN Management

Managing about ~12 WLC's (and countless Routers/Switches/FW's/Servers etc.), I use Linux tools and scripts, like the one below, every day. Can't reall...

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802.11 Medium Access

Below is my attempt to lay out what happens when an 802.11 Wireless device (STA) wants to send a frame over the medium (air). Whether the STA is a cli...

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Iperf3 & WiFiPerf

While Ookla (speedtest.net) is a great resource when out on public networks, I'd recommend having something on your LAN for more consistent and thorou...

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802.11d -- Why you should care.

Like many, I recently updated OSX to the latest version. After doing so, I could no longer connect to my 5GHz SSID. Immediately, I'm blaming the upgra...

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WPA2-Enterprise & FreeRADIUS

RADIUS has been around a while (RFC’s dating back to the 90’s) and it’s uses are very broad.  <Disclaimer> This is not a verbose RADIUS tut...

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AP Neighbor Messages (or lack of)

Neighbor messages, by default, are sent every 60 seconds over the air (DS bit set to 11) to multicast address 01:0B:85:00:00:00. They include the deta...

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Nagios Plugin to monitor WLC AP's

I wrote this plugin to monitor the currently associated Access Points on a Cisco Wireless Lan Controller in Nagios.  It throws an 'Critical' aler...

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RRM DCA Reason Codes

My intepretations after working with TAC to identify what the reason codes mean for a WLC DCA Channel Change: This is viewable in WCS/NCS/PI, and is i...

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WLC debug clieng codes

From  cisco support forums 802.11 Association Status Codes Code 802.11 definition Explanation 0 Successful 1 Unspecified failure For example : wh...

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802.11 packet capture

Capture 802.11 from OSX /usr/libexec/airportd en0 sniff <channel> It saves it to a file in /tmp /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.fra...

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