Part 7 of the Aruba Wireless series: ARM versus AirMatch, ClientMatch steering, radio and regulatory-domain profiles, channel width and DFS choices, spectrum analysis and WIDS/RFProtect, a layered troubleshooting method with the key AOS 8 commands, and how AOS 10 changes the architecture.
Part 6 of the Aruba Wireless series: legacy controller redundancy (VRRP, LMS, HA groups), AOS 8 controller clustering with AAC/S-AAC and UAC/S-UAC, the bucket map, L2- vs L3-connected clusters, hitless failover, load balancing, CoA in clusters, fast roaming with OKC, 802.11r/k/v, and Live Upgrade.
Part 5 of the Aruba Wireless series: user roles and the Policy Enforcement Firewall, session ACL syntax and aliases, AppRF, bandwidth contracts, role and VLAN derivation (UDR, default roles, server derivation rules, Aruba VSAs), downloadable user roles, Change of Authorization, MAC authentication, external captive portals, and integrating ClearPass Policy Manager.
Part 4 of the Aruba Wireless series: the AOS 8 profile model (AP group, virtual AP, SSID profile, AAA profile, server groups) and complete CLI builds of an 802.1X enterprise WLAN, a WPA2/WPA3 PSK IoT WLAN and a captive-portal guest WLAN, plus WPA3 and 6 GHz rules, data rates, multicast optimization, VLAN pools and verification commands.
Part 3 of the Aruba Wireless series: Aruba access point hardware and naming, the AP boot and controller discovery process (static, DHCP option 43, ADP, DNS), AP groups and provisioning, AP modes, control plane security and the CPsec whitelist, PAPI and GRE tunnels, forwarding modes, Remote APs, and AP troubleshooting from APBoot to show ap database.
Part 2 of the Aruba Wireless series: Mobility Conductor and Mobility Controller platforms, the AOS 8 configuration hierarchy and inheritance, onboarding a managed device with the setup dialog, controller interfaces and trusted ports, Conductor redundancy, and centralized licence pools.
Part 1 of a seven-part Aruba Wireless series: the Aruba product families (Instant APs, Mobility Controllers, Mobility Conductor, Aruba Central, ClearPass), the AOS 6, AOS 8 and AOS 10 operating systems, the management/control/data plane split, forwarding modes, and how to build a home lab.
A practical Wi-Fi glossary: architecture terms (AP, controller, BSS, BSA, SSID, BSSID, ESS, DS, roaming), RF and physical-layer vocabulary, channels and spectrum, 802.11 MAC and frames, security, QoS and roaming, standards bodies and enterprise WLAN terms, plus an A–Z acronym table.
The three amendments that made Wi-Fi enterprise-ready: 802.11h DFS and TPC for coexisting with radar, 802.11e/WMM EDCA access categories and DSCP mapping for voice and video, and 802.11i RSN with its key hierarchy and 4-way handshake — plus PMF (802.11w), WPA3, Enhanced Open, and a Wireshark checklist for verifying all of it in a capture.
How 20 MHz channels are bonded into 40, 80, 160 and 320 MHz channels — primary and secondary channels, dynamic bandwidth, preamble puncturing and the capacity trade-off — followed by the 802.11 MAC header, the four address fields, and management, control and data frames with reason codes and Wireshark filters.