How to shut down AP 1200 APs at night

[jmerricks]

We are a boarding school and have installed 3 AP350s and 68 AP1200 access points in our dormitories and classrooms. We are implementing a laptop program and want to cut off access to our network from 10:00 PM until 6:00AM the next morning. We use Netware 6.0, Bordermanager, Groupwise and Zen. We do have their logins disabled at 10:00PM by Netware. However, they can still use email if the access points are still active. They cannot access the internet because they are not authenticated to the network after 10: PM. We are currently using timers to turn the APs on and off but would like to see a better idea because of power failuers which can cause the times to be off.

Joe Merricks

Network Administrator

Hargrave Military Academy

Chatham, VA 24531

434-432-2481 x 2150

merricksj@hargrave.edu

[BERNHARD FIEGLMUELLER]

You can use the Cisco WLSE to shut down the radio interface over snmp from 10pm until 6am

regards Bernhard

[jmerricks]

Thanks, Bernhard. However, the $6,000 pricetag for WLSE is a little steep for our school right now. Any other ideas?

[lbadman]

Hi Bernhard-

Where do I find guidance on this capability?

Lee

[j.t.faust]

Joe,

If the WSLE appliance is out of the price range for now, maybe you could point the APs back to a RADIUS server, like Cisco Secure ACS and block out the time slot there per group or user. A lot will depend on how you are authenticating users on wireless in the first place.

We are looking at the WSLE for 2004. For now, if I had to, I would restrict the time on our ACS server on the default group. WSLE will soon have rogue AP dedection functionality (next release I am told) as well.

Ted

[DOMJAHN DAVID]

Maybe also the CRON feature will do the job to do a "radio off" / "radio on"? (i don't know if cron is available in the Access Point IOS..)

[richard-hughes]

What about a script of some kind that logs into the AP's via Telnet and then shuts the Radio interfaces down? Perl?

[emcpherson]

How about using access-list time range on the router applied to the interface where you are controlling the subnet? You can just about do anything from there.

Can you use time range in Bordermanager?

[bill.sheldon]

I assume the APs connect via switches into routers.

Iwould use named access lists on the router interface(s). These will need to be applied to each vlan you use (if any)

basically

ip access-list extended timed

permit ip any any time-range hours

deny ip any any

time-range hours

periodic weekdays 8:00 to 17:00

Apply this and traffic only flows on weekdays between 0800 and 1700.

cheers

Bill

[emcpherson]

The cheapest thing that I can think of is probably one of those X'mas lights timer that you can plug in between the WAP and the electrical outlet. It would completely shutdown your access point.