User's Manual Part 1

Firetide - Reliable Connectivity Anywhere 7 January 2011
Chapter 4 Access Point Tab
Discovery
Firetide HotPoint 5000 Access Points can operate as stand-alone devices, or be associated with Firetide Wireless Controllers. Controller-
based operation, called Managed Mode, offers many additional features, including roaming. The Controller can auto-discover and man-
age the access points in the same layer-2 domain, or across a layer-3 domain, but certain conditions must be met
Discovery for Initial Setup
New or factory-reset APs operate in stand-alone mode, unaware of the existence of the Controller. The Controller can discover these
units as long as they are on the same layer-2 subnet. Once an AP is discovered, it switches into Managed Mode. APs in Managed Mode
will look for a Controller whenever they reboot, using IP multicast.
Access Points in stand-alone mode (including any factory-reset APs) can only be discovered within the local subnet.
At the end of the discovery process, each discovered AP will be running a controller-based software image and will have attached itself
to the controller that discovered it. It will be ready to accept client connections.
Re-Discovery
Once an AP has been discovered, it remains a Managed AP until it is factory reset. Managed APs will actively look for the Control-
ler after a reboot. This process uses IP multicast, and can work across multiple subnets, if you enable multicast routing for address
224.0.100.250 between controller and the APs. Alternately, you can enable DHCP option 43 on the DHCP server and provide the con-
troller’s IP address. APs will get their address via this DHCP server and get the controller’s IP as part of the option 43.
For the discovery process to work, the FWC 2050 and the APs must be running compatible rmware versions. Contact Firetide for details
on rmware levels. In addition, DHCP service must be available, either from a system-wide DHCP server or via the DHCP service offered
by the FWC2050.
Last Discovered
The results of the auto-discovery are shown in the “Last Discovered” page under Discovery menu. Access Points can also be
added manually.
Conguration and Image Upgrade on the AP
After each reboot of an access point AP, the AP will look for its Controller, using multicast. Upon reconnecting, the AP and Controller
will re-synchronize on rmware levels and AP settings. As part of this state machine, the AP will load any new rmware image posted
to the controller. It will also synchronize to any conguration changes that were done on the controller while the AP was ofine.
Managed AP List
This displays a list of APs currently under management, and allows you to edit their settings.