Time For an Update!

I’m realizing that this blog has been neglected for far too long!

As part of updating the blog for the latest software patches, adding an SSL cert so that Google will continue to index us, and general maintenance being done, I realized I had a whole batch of drafts that were started over 18 months ago that never saw the light of day.

Oh how things have changed!

I intent to get content coming back to this blog regularly. This site, https://charlieclemmer.com/, will remain as my primary technical repository. Most things here will be wireless related, or derivatives that wireless professionals would be interested in, but may stray on occasion to other networking topics like virtualization or client devices as interesting topics come up.

I also considered combining my old motorcycle blog (which is https://rocketcowboy.net/ by the way) into this blog to cut down on the number of sites I’m maintaining, but that’s too far off topic to keep everyone’s attention. Anyway, with motorcycles fading into the past and photography being in the forefront, that site will evolve on it’s own and not detract from here.

My third site focuses on my event photography, so if you landed here as a result of Google, you probably want to check out https://charlieclemmerphotography.com instead to find your images.

With all that said, what’s been going on here? Since May of 2016, I left Aruba Networks to help an emerging ecosystem provider get established in the North American marketplace. Most of those draft posts that I mentioned above, were related to this change. Skyfii was a great learning opportunity for me and great for getting connected with the larger wifi market, but ultimately the travel and pace required to continue working dual time-zones (All US timezones as well as Australia) was more than I could say grace over. In July of 2017, I took a position with Fortinet, where I am focused on the company’s access technologies (switching and wireless) as well as products like network authentication and analytics.

As with my time at Aruba, this site is not an official outlet for news or information related to Fortinet. I will be using this to document my way through the various technologies that I encounter, however, so if there are particular topics that you’d like to see included here, drop me a comment and I’ll look at how that can be incorporated into my timeline.

If you’re still reading, thanks for sticking with me. I promise there will be more technical articles to come!

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Mobility Field Day at Aruba Networks – Skyfii Integration with ArubaOS

On September 13, 2016, I presented on behalf of Skyfii how our analytics solution integrated with Aruba’s wireless APIs to leverage data collected from the wireless infrastructure to unlock operational insights for an organization.

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WLPC IPv6 Presentation

Long before I got involved with wireless, I had an opportunity to get hands on exposure with IPv6 while working at Nortel Networks. In 2015, the Wireless LAN Professionals Conference returned, and I got to do a presentation on IPv6 and how it impacts 802.11 wireless.

In some ways, a lot has changed regarding IPv6, but then alot has stayed the same. I’m still interested in tracking IPv6 deployments within wifi installations, so if you know of an interested deployment please let me know!

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WLPC Warehouse Design Presentation

In 2014, I had the honor of presenting at the inaugural Wireless LAN Professionals conference in Austin, TX.

The session I presented was on Designing WLANs for Hostile Environments, particular warehouse design considerations. While based on Aruba’s Retail Wireless VRD that was available at the time, the discussion was updated to take into account newer technologies such as 802.11n.

The link to the presentation is below:

Have any questions or follow-up? Don’t hesitate to comment below or reach me directly on Twitter or via email.

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ClearPass and Airwave Updates

In the past two weeks, Aruba has rolled out big upgrades to both the ClearPass and Airwave product lines.

Last week, Airwave was updated to 8.2.0 from 8.0.x. Upgrade images and release notes can be found in their usual locations on the support site (support.arubanetworks.com), the biggest changes are the introduction of Clarity along with the updated user interface. Clarity Monitoring is considered a beta feature in Airwave 8.2.0 (and does require controllers running 6.4.3 or later), but does monitor and report on client association times, complete authentication times, as well as DHCP and DNS response times for clients.

The other big upgrade was ClearPass being updated from 6.5 to 6.6. Many new enhancements with this release as well, most visible is the new user interface for ClearPass Insight. Along with the changes to Insight, the Cluster Upgrade Tool is now natively available within the ClearPass appliance rather than requiring a separate install.

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Latest ArubaOS Releases

Last week, Aruba release 6.4.3.2 of ArubaOS for theMobility Controller products.

This week, Aruba also released 7.3.2.6 of ArubaOS for the Mobility Access Switch products.

Software and documentation for both releases can be found at http://support.arubanetworks.com.

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ArubaOS 6.4.3.1 Released

Last week, Aruba released ArubaOS 6.4.3.1 for controller-based deployments.

Software and release notes can be found at the Aruba support site.

Key features with this latest version of code include:

  • New AP hardware support: AP-205H, AP-228, and AP-277
  • AP Console Access using a Backup ESSID
  • Controller hardware support: 7024, and 7205
  • Anyspot Client Probe Suppression
  • Cloud Services Controller functionality
    • Authentication Survivability
    • Palo Alto Networks integration
    • WAN Health Monitor
    • Virtual APs for WAN link failure
    • WAN Optimization
    • Zero Touch Provisioning for cloud services controllers
  • RadSec on RADIUS Servers
  • Mesh Support for all 802.11ac access points
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Aruba ALE 1.3 Released

Aruba released the FCS version of ALE 1.3 on December 23rd. The FCS release build is 47580. Software and documentation can be found at http://support.arubanetworks.com.

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Aruba AOS 6.4.2.3 Upgraded to Generally Available (GA) Status

Aruba upgraded the AOS 6.4.2.3 status from Early Availability (EA) to Generally Available (GA) today. Software and release notes can be found at http://support.arubanetworks.com.

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ArubaOS 6.4.2.3 Released

Late last week, Aruba released AOS version 6.4.2.3.

Code and release notes can be found at http://support.arubanetworks.com.

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