Quick Reference Guide

Discover and Manage Access Points

ProSAFE Wireless Controller WC9500

Access Point Discovery Guidelines

You need to run the Discovery Wizard for the wireless controller to discover supported

NETGEAR access points on the LAN or WAN. The wireless controller can discover access

points that are still in their factory default state and access points that are deployed and

running.

After the access points are discovered, you can add them to the Managed AP List. You can

then use the wireless controller to configure, manage, and monitor the managed access

points.

General Discovery Guidelines

An access point needs to run at least its initial firmware release or a newer version. For

firmware requirements, see NETGEAR ProSAFE Access Points on page 15. There are no

other firmware requirements for the access point to function with the wireless controller.

Access points in factory default state that are in the same Layer 2 network can have the

same IP address and still be discovered. Depending on the configuration of the DHCP

server, these access points are discovered in parallel or sequentially

Layer 3 Discovery Guidelines

These are the requirements for autodiscovery of local access points across Layer 3

networks:

• All standalone access points need to have SNMP and SSH enabled. (This is the default

setting for access points.)

• UDP port number 7890 needs to be unblocked in the firewall.

• Each access point needs to have a unique IP address. (This requirement does not apply

to Layer 2 discovery

.) If more than one access point has the same IP address, only one of

them is discovered at a time.

You have to add the access point to the managed list,

change its IP address, and run discovery again to discover the next access point with that

IP address.

• DHCP option 43 (vendor-specific information) needs to be enabled on an external DHCP

server

. Specifying an internal DHCP server on the wireless controller automatically

enables DHCP option 43 with the IP address of the wireless controller.

How you need to configure DHCP option 43 depends on the type of external DHCP

server:

- Layer 3 switch as a DHCP server. If you use a Layer 3 switch as a DHCP server,

specify the wireless controller’

s IP address in hexadecimal format to allow the access

points to receive the wireless controller’s IP address and to allow the DHCP server to

assign IP addresses to the access points. The hexadecimal address needs to be

preceded by the vendor-specific octets 02:04:.