How to bypass Light Weight AP's from LMS 3.2 discovery

[sfenderson]

I have been installing Light Weight AP's and these make LMS device discovery take much longer because they are found via CDP but do not run SNMP. So you suffer the SNMP retry and wait time for each one which adds up with several hundred AP's. I added the CDP platform description they announce via CDP to system-config.xml but this didn't do the trick. I have updated system-config.xml successfully in the past to add ATA's and 7936 conference phones and this stopped discovery from processing these devices. So I was surprised when this didn't work for LW AP's. The CDP platform of the AP's looks like this (from show cdp n):

Platform: cisco AIR-CAP3502E-A-K9   ,  Capabilities: Trans-Bridge

So you can see cisco is all lower case and there appears to be spaces at the end before the comma. I thought the spaces might be the problem so I added them in system-config.xml but this didn't help. When I display system-config.xml with the XML editor in IE it does not show spaces at the end even though they are their when I look at the file with notepad. When I enable debug for discovery it shows these being added to the bypass table for CDP discovery but it still tries to process them. Any idea what is going on here and how I can bypass these? This is LMS 3.2 on Windows Server 2003. I use the CDP module for discovery. I have attached the system-config.xml. Thanks.

[Marvin Rhoads]

Have you tried adding a filter to your discovery job? (Instructions here) It would be easiest if the LW APs' IPs were all on a common network (subnet or supernet without other devices you need to discover) and one entry would exclude them all.

Another alternative is to run the (long) discovery and then export the device list, remove the uwanted devices, clear the DCR and then forgo discovery and instead use the cleaned up list as a pre-defined. Of course you lose ongoing discovery functionality with that approach.

[sfenderson]

They are not on a common subnet. They are spread across many sites so a discovery filter would be tedious.

[Marvin Rhoads]

I sort of guessed they would be spread out when you mentioned the number.

I did a forum search and note that our resident CiscoWorks expert Joe Clarke had also recommended a discovery filter for Lightweight APs in this posting last year.

Another thought that comes to mind is do you really need CDP on the APs? You could push out a change through your WCS or whatever enterprise tool you are using to turn off CDP on the APs. ...of course that may have unwanted side effects for your WCS - I'm not sure to what extent it relies on CDP as opposed or in addition to CAPWAP / LWAPP. Perhaps you have a lab or test AP you could try that on.

[sfenderson]

I read the post from Joe and I have had him help me before with similar issues on IP Phones. I tried the same thing for LW AP's and its not working. I was hoping someone would have run into this and know if this is a defect in LMS or if there is something else I am missing. I don't really want to disable CDP on the LW AP's as we use this for troubleshooting a lot. Thanks.

[Michel Hegeraat]

You may want to check another one of Joe's doc, the part "other filters".

https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-9005#Other_Filters

You can perhaps exclude the LWAP platform like it does with some others by adding it to the system-config.xml file.

Cheers,

Michel

[sfenderson]

Michel, I did add them to system-config.xml but this is not working. I am wondering if there is a limit to how many CDP platform ID's can be listed in system-config.xml. I am also wondering if the trailing spaces in the CDP platform ID of the LW AP's is causing a match problem for discovery.