• Managing BLE Beacons in Cisco Wave 2 APs—BLE beacons are battery-powered, low-cost transmitters integrated with Cisco Wave 2 AP radios and can be used to transmit proximity-based, context-aware messages to enhance location services for mobile devices.

  For more information, see the "Managing BLE Beacons in Cisco Wave 2 APs" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

• 802.1X Support for EAP-TLS and EAP-PEAP—In this release, 802.1X support is extended to EAP-TLS and PEAP methods along with EAP-FAST method in Cisco Wave 2 APs.

  Prior to this release, EAP-FAST was the only supported 802.1X AP switchport authentication method.

  EAP-TLS and PEAP methods are supported only in Cisco Wave 2 APs. Cisco Wave 1 APs support only EAP-FAST method.

  For more information, see the "AP 802.1X Supplicant" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

• AUX Ethernet Port Enabled on Cisco Wave 2 APs—The second Ethernet port, also called the AUX port, of Cisco Aironet 1850, 2800, and 3800 Series APs is, by default, used as a link aggregation (LAG) port. It is possible to use this LAG port as a LAN port when LAG is disabled. When the AUX port is configured as a LAN port, you can either use the AP group setting to configure the LAN port for a group of APs or use the LAN override functionality to configure the LAN port for each AP separately.

  For more information, see the "Converting Cisco Wave 2 AP AUX Port to LAN Port (CLI)" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

• The following features, which are already supported in Wave 1 APs, are supported in Wave 2 APs in this release:

  • DHCP Option 60

  • Limit clients per AP radio or per WLAN per AP radio

  • Passive clients

  • Proxy ARP

  • FlexConnect Ethernet fallback

  • AAA override of VLAN name, VLAN name ID template for FlexConnect local authentication

  • AAA override for bidirectional rate limit per client or BSSID

  • Management Frame Protection

This feature extends FlexConnect ACL to accept internet domain names in addition to the existing IP addresses in its rules. This provides the flexibility of matching traffic based on the destination URL rather than the IP addresses associated with the URL.

In this release, this feature is also supported on Software-Defined Accesss Wireless (Fabric).

For more information, see the "FlexConnect ACLs" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

Monitoring and management of high availability standby WLC is enhanced to display the serial number and fan status of the standby WLC:

• GUI—The new statistics are displayed on the Monitor > Redundancy > Peer Statistics page.

• CLI—The show redundancy peer-system statistics command displays the new statistics.

A secure link called the encrypted mobility tunnel, which is based on the mobility tunnel and is encrypted using CAPWAP DTLS protocol, can be established between an anchor and a foreign Cisco WLC. The encrypted mobility tunnel feature is supported in high availability (HA) client SSO scenarios.

For more information, see the "Encrypted Mobility Tunnel" chapter in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

Prior to this release, if you configured RxSOP threshold on Cisco WLC CLI to a custom value, the Cisco WLC GUI would reflect the threshold value as AUTO. In this release, an option is provided on Cisco WLC GUI to configure a custom RxSOP threshold value.

For more information, see the "Receiver Start of Packet Detection Threshold (Rx-SOP)" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

Prior to this release, if Cisco CleanAir was enabled, by default, the BLE beacon was included in the list of interferences to be detected. In this release, the functionality is changed wherein the BLE beacon is, by default, excluded from the list of interferences to be detected. This change in functionality is made to eliminate unwanted off-channel scans to improve performance. If you want the BLE beacon to be detected, you must explicitly add it to the list of interferences to be detected.

In this release, support is added to send only the required Network Mobility Services Protocol (NMSP) data to Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences (CMX) (applicable to both on-premise and cloud-based Cisco CMX). Cisco CMX can subscribe to NMSP data of specific APs or AP groups based on the active services in Cisco WLC.

For more information, see the "NMSP by AP Groups with Subscription List from CMX" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

• Legacy clients that require RC4 or 3DES encryption types are not supported in Local EAP authentication.

• This release supports additional configuration options for 802.11r FT enable and disable. The additional configuration option is not valid for releases earlier than Release 8.4. If you downgrade from Release 8.7 to Release 8.2 or an earlier release, the additional configuration option is invalidated and defaulted to FT disable. When you reboot Cisco WLC with the downgraded image, invalid configurations are printed on the console. We recommend that you ignore this because there is no functional impact, and the configuration defaults to FT disable.

• If you downgrade from Release 8.7 to a 7.x release, the trap configuration is lost and must be reconfigured.

• After downloading the new software to the Cisco APs, it is possible that a Cisco AP may get stuck in an upgrading image state. In such a scenario, it might be necessary to forcefully reboot Cisco WLC to download a new image or to reboot Cisco WLC after the download of the new image. You can forcefully reboot Cisco WLC by entering the reset system forced command.

• It is not possible to download some of the older configurations from Cisco WLC because of the Multicast and IP address validations. See the "Restrictions on Configuring Multicast Mode" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide for detailed information about platform support for global multicast and multicast mode.

• If you upgrade from Release 8.0.110.0 to a later release, the config redundancy mobilitymac mac-addr command's setting is removed. You must manually reconfigure the mobility MAC address after the upgrade.

• If you are upgrading from Release 8.0.140.0 or 8.0.15x.0 to a later release and also have the multiple country code feature configured, the feature configuration is corrupted after the upgrade. For more information, see CSCve41740.

• If you are upgrading from a 7.4.x or an earlier release to a release later than 7.4, the Called Station ID type information is mapped to the RADIUS Accounting Called Station ID type, which, by default, is set to apradio-mac-ssid. You can configure the RADIUS Authentication Called Station ID type information by using the config radius auth callStationIdType command.

• When a client sends an HTTP request, the Cisco WLC intercepts it for redirection to the login page. If the HTTP GET request that is intercepted by the Cisco WLC is longer than 2000 bytes, the Cisco WLC drops the packet. Track the Caveat ID CSCuy81133 for a possible enhancement to address this restriction.

• When downgrading from one release to another, you might lose the configuration from your current release. The workaround is to reload the previous Cisco WLC configuration files that are saved in the backup server, or to reconfigure Cisco WLC.

• When you upgrade Cisco WLC to an intermediate release, wait until all the APs that are associated with Cisco WLC are upgraded to the intermediate release before you install the latest Cisco WLC software. In large networks, it can take some time to download the software on each AP.

• You can upgrade to a new release of the Cisco WLC software or downgrade to an earlier release even if FIPS is enabled.

• When you upgrade to the latest software release, the software on the APs associated with Cisco WLC is also automatically upgraded. When an AP is loading software, each of its LEDs blinks in succession.

• Cisco WLCs support standard SNMP MIB files. MIBs can be downloaded from the software download page on Cisco.com.

• The Cisco WLC software is factory installed on your Cisco WLC and is automatically downloaded to the APs after a release upgrade and whenever an AP joins a Cisco WLC. We recommend that you install the latest software version available for maximum operational benefit.

• Ensure that you have a TFTP, HTTP, FTP, or SFTP server available for the software upgrade. Follow these guidelines when setting up a server:

  • Ensure that your TFTP server supports files that are larger than the size of Cisco WLC software image. Some TFTP servers that support files of this size are tftpd32 and the TFTP server within Cisco Prime Infrastructure. If you attempt to download the Cisco WLC software image and your TFTP server does not support files of this size, the following error message appears:

    TFTP failure while storing in flash

  • If you are upgrading through the distribution system network port, the TFTP or FTP server can be on the same subnet or a different subnet because the distribution system port is routable.

• The Cisco WLC Bootloader stores a copy of the active primary image and the backup image. If the primary image becomes corrupted, you can use the Bootloader to boot with the backup image.

  With the backup image stored before rebooting, from the Boot Options menu, choose Option 2: Run Backup Image to boot from the backup image. Then, upgrade with a known working image and reboot Cisco WLC.

• You can control the addresses that are sent in the Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) discovery responses when NAT is enabled on the Management Interface, using the following command:

  config network ap-discovery nat-ip-only {enable | disable}

  The following are the details of the command:

  enable —Enables use of NAT IP only in a discovery response. This is the default. Use this command if all the APs are outside the NAT gateway.

  disable —Enables use of both NAT IP and non-NAT IP in a discovery response. Use this command if APs are on the inside and outside the NAT gateway, for example, Local Mode and OfficeExtend APs are on the same Cisco WLC.

  Note	To avoid stranding of APs, you must disable AP link latency (if enabled) before you use the disable option in the config network ap-discovery nat-ip-only command. To disable AP link latency, use the config ap link-latency disable all command.

• Do not power down Cisco WLC or any AP during the upgrade process. If you do this, the software image might get corrupted. Upgrading Cisco WLC with a large number of APs can take as long as 30 minutes, depending on the size of your network. However, with the increased number of concurrent AP upgrades supported, the upgrade time should be significantly reduced. The APs must remain powered, and Cisco WLC must not be reset during this time.

• To downgrade from this release to Release 6.0 or an earlier release, perform either of these tasks:

  • Delete all the WLANs that are mapped to interface groups, and create new ones.

  • Ensure that all the WLANs are mapped to interfaces rather than interface groups.

• After you perform the following functions on Cisco WLC, reboot it for the changes to take effect:

  • Enable or disable LAG

  • Enable a feature that is dependent on certificates (such as HTTPS and web authentication)

  • Add a new license or modify an existing license

    Note	Reboot is not required if you are using Right-to-Use licenses.

  • Increase the priority of a license

  • Enable HA

  • Install the SSL certificate

  • Configure the database size

  • Install the vendor-device certificate

  • Download the CA certificate

  • Upload the configuration file

  • Install the Web Authentication certificate

  • Make changes to the management interface or the virtual interface

• From Release 8.3 or a later release, ensure that the configuration file that you back up does not contain the < or > special characters. If either of the special characters is present, the download of the backed up configuration file fails.

• Cisco WLAN Express Setup Over-the-Air Provisioning

• Mobility controller functionality in converged access mode

• VPN Termination (such as IPsec and L2TP)

• Internal DHCP Server

• Mobility controller functionality in converged access mode

• VPN termination (such as IPsec and L2TP)

• Fragmented pings on any interface

• Cisco Umbrella

• Domain-based ACLs

• Internal DHCP server

• Cisco TrustSec

• Access points in local mode

• Mobility or Guest Anchor role

• Wired Guest

• Multicast

  Note	FlexConnect locally switched multicast traffic is bridged transparently for both wired and wireless on the same VLAN. FlexConnect APs do not limit traffic based on IGMP or MLD snooping.

• FlexConnect central switching in large-scale deployments

  Note	FlexConnect central switching is supported in only small-scale deployments, wherein the total traffic on controller ports is not more than 500 Mbps. FlexConnect local switching is supported.

• Local switching on Microsoft Hyper-V deployments

• AP and Client SSO in High Availability

• PMIPv6

• Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS)

• EoGRE (Supported only in local switching mode)

• Workgroup bridges

• Client downstream rate limiting for central switching

• SHA2 certificates

• Controller integration with Lync SDN API

• Cisco OfficeExtend Access Points

For detailed information about feature support on Cisco Aironet Wave 2 APs, see:

Note	For Cisco Aironet 1850 Series AP technical specifications with details on currently supported features, see the Cisco Aironet 1850 Series Access Points Data Sheet.

• Load-based call admission control (CAC). Mesh networks support only bandwidth-based CAC or static CAC

• High availability (Fast heartbeat and primary discovery join timer)

• AP acting as supplicant with EAP-FASTv1 and 802.1X authentication

• AP join priority (Mesh APs have a fixed priority)

• Location-based services

• Dynamic Mesh backhaul data rate.

  Note	We recommend that you keep the Bridge data rate of the AP as auto.

• Background scanning

• Noise-tolerant fast convergence

• Flex+Mesh

• Noise-tolerant fast convergence

• Flex+Mesh