Capturing Packets

For a detailed explanation of all packet capture commands, see the Troubleshooting chapter of the FortiWLC (SD) Command Reference. Packet Capture Profile Example – WireShark

To do this, you need an external system running WireShark. This example creates the packetcapture-profile named Sniffer on a controller and then forwards the captured packets in layer 3 mode from AP-5 to WireShark on port #17777. Port 17777 is the ppi encapsulation port where WireShark is listening for incoming packets in L3 mode on a remote machine with IP address 1.1.1.1.

MC3200(15)# configure terminal

MC3200(15)(config)# packet‐capture‐profile sniffer

MC3200(15)(config‐pcap)# mode l3 destination‐ip 1.1.1.1 port 17777

MC3200(15)(config‐pcap)# ap‐list 5

MC3200(15)(config‐pcap)# enable 

MC3200(15)(config‐pcap)# packet‐truncation‐length 0

MC3200(15)(config‐pcap)# exit

MC3200(15)(config)# end   

MC3200(15)# sh packet‐capture‐profile sniffer

AP Packet Capture

Profile Name                            : sniffer

Enable/Disable                          : enable

Encapsulation                           : ppi

L2/L3 Mode                              : l3

Destination IP Address                  : 1.1.1.1

UDP Destination Port                    : 17777

Destination MAC for L2 Mode             : 00:00:00:00:00:00

Rx only/Tx only/Both                    : rx

Rate Limiting per station or cumulative : station

Token Bucket Rate                       : 10

Token Bucket Size                       : 10

AP Selection (ID)                       : 5

Extended Filter String                  : Interface Index                         :

Packet Truncation Length                : 0

Rate Limiting                           : off

Capture Sibling Frames                  : on

MC3200(15)#

MC3200(15)#

For a detailed explanation of the packet capture profile commands, see the Troubleshooting chapter of the FortiWLC (SD) Command Reference.

Capturing Packets

What to Look For In Capture-Packet Results

When discovery is via L3, the results of capture-packet should be a UDP port 9292 packet from the AP to the controller followed by a second UDP 9292 packet from the controller to the AP.

After the two UDP packets, there should be about nine UDP port 5000 packets. Check the time deltas between packets; there should only be tenths of a second between packets. Usually, the fifth UDP 5000 packet is from the AP to the controller and is the first one to contain the certificate used for authentication. Immediately following the certificate packet should be a packet from controller to the AP using UDP port 5000 that also contains a certificate.

What to Look For In the Discovery Log

The key messages from a successful discovery message trace are:

COMM: CSDS_REQUEST_DISCOVERY message

COMM: Discovery request from <AP MAC address>/<AP IP Address> received [skip unimportant messages]

COMM: Searching redirect entry for ipAddr 192.168.10.53 [skip unimportant messages]

COMM: Trying to check‐out <n> licenses for feature “ap”.

COMM: lc_checkout OK for feature “ap”. Now, <n> licenses have been checked out

COMM: Response msg to ATS <AP MAC address>/<AP IP Address>

[skip unimportant messages]

COMM: Starting ATS script as: /opt/meru/bin/meru‐wnc‐ats start 3 8 1 1

Result: Registered virtual device ‘<AP MAC address>’

COMM: State file /opt/meru/var/run/discovery.state successfully written.

[skip unimportant messages]

COMM: authentication message 0 with payload type 0 from ‐‐‐ 3:8:37

COMM: /CN=meru AP/ST=California/C=US/Email=support@merunetworks.com ‐ OK [skip unimportant messages] COMM: AuthMgr::ProcessAccept: 3:8 new key 8f 8e eb …

One example of the messages you would see when discovery failed because of a licensing issue is:

COMM: Trying to check‐out 1 licenses for feature “ap”.

COMM: Checking out one more license for AP failed. FlexRetCode = ‐9

COMM: lc_checkout FAIL

COMM: AP‐1 00:0C:E6:00:2C:96 failed licensing

Also, check the following in the discovery log:

• Does the output of the command sh license show the same or more licenses than there are APs?
• Does the output of the command show license-file active show a system ID something like

HOSTID=COMPOSITE=<controller system id> that agrees with the system ID outputted by the command sh controller?