Michael McNamara

In this post I'll review how you can find a specific wireless device on your Motorola WS5100 Wireless LAN Switch.

We want to locate the following device wireless-laptop.acme.org so we need to start by identifying the IP address of the device. Thanks to Dynamic DNS we can be assured that our DNS servers will have that information.

C:\>nslookup wireless-laptop.acme.org.
Server: 10.1.1.1
Address: 10.1.1.1#53

Name: wireless-laptop.acme.org
Address: 10.1.195.55

In most circumstances we'd now need to identify the MAC address of the wireless device. We can skip that step since the WS5100 will have the IP address of the client for us to search against.

WS5100# show wireless mobile-unit

Number of mobile-units associated: 23
index   MAC-address       radio type wlan vlan/tunnel  ready  IP-address    last active
  1     00-1B-77-30-DF-80  30    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.57   1 Sec
  2     00-20-E0-1A-0F-E5  58    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.48   20 Sec
  3     00-13-E8-86-DF-F3  30    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.96   0 Sec
  4     00-15-00-32-8C-EC  19    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.31   31 Sec
  5     00-15-00-32-D6-46  29    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.50   16 Sec
  6     00-15-00-32-D3-67  1     11g  2      vlan 17   Y     10.1.194.54   4 Sec
  7     00-A0-F8-D4-46-9C  2     11b  4      vlan 22   Y     10.1.206.53   223 Sec
  8     00-A0-F8-D4-48-FD  1     11b  4      vlan 22   Y     10.1.206.207  215 Sec
  9     00-1B-77-2A-99-05  30    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.55   7 Sec
  10    00-18-DE-7A-76-D0  30    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.67   16 Sec
  11    00-16-6F-1D-F1-B9  1     11g  2      vlan 17   Y     10.1.194.44   6 Sec
  12    00-1B-77-31-11-77  30    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.68   4 Sec
  13    00-90-7A-04-16-5F  1     11b  3      vlan 21   Y     10.1.198.52   11 Sec
  14    00-A0-F8-D6-3C-2A  1     11b  4      vlan 22   Y     10.1.206.70   652 Sec
  15    00-A0-F8-D4-45-A5  2     11b  4      vlan 22   Y     10.1.206.252  170 Sec
  16    00-13-E8-5B-ED-73  30    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.106  4 Sec
  17    00-13-E8-5B-EE-39  30    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.111  23 Sec
  18    00-18-DE-7A-9E-3A  30    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.77   20 Sec
  20    00-90-7A-03-5E-C7  1     11b  3      vlan 21   Y     10.1.198.50   23 Sec
  21    00-13-E8-86-C8-55  30    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.107  5 Sec
  22    00-A0-F8-D4-48-5F  1     11b  4      vlan 22   Y     10.1.206.145  124 Sec
  24    00-13-E8-86-C7-E7  30    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.110  10 Sec
  26    00-1B-77-2A-5C-6C  30    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.81   37 Sec

Note: if you have a lot of mobile units you can use grep;

WS5100# show wireless mobile-unit | grep "10.1.195.55"

  9     00-1B-77-2A-99-05  30    11a  1      vlan 18   Y     10.1.195.55   7 Sec

Now that we have the MU (Mobile Unit) index (the first number on the line) we can get the full details;

WS5100# show wireless mobile-unit 9

MAC: 00-1B-77-2A-99-05, IP Address: 10.1.195.55, Type: 11a, State: data-ready
Radio Config Index: 30, Bssid: 00-15-70-12-1D-78
Wlan: 1, Vlan: vlan 18, Voice: N, Powersave: N, Classification: normal
Encryption Type: tkip (key index: 1) Authentication Type: eap
Last Assoc: 7990 seconds ago, Last Activity: 23 seconds ago, Roam-Count: 18
DHCP state : DHCPNONE AP Scan Support: N
Session Timeout: 100 days 00:00:00 Idle Timeout: 0 days 00:30:00

In the information above we can see that the MU is associated to radio 30, so let's look at radio 30;

WS5100# show wireless radio 30

Radio: 30, Mac: <00-15-70-11-34-32>, Type: 11a, ap Index: 7, vlan 198
Current Channel: 36 [5180 MHz], Configured Channel: acs
Current Power: 17 dBm, Max ESS: 16, Max BSS: 4, Num Mu: 11
BSS: 00-15-70-12-1D-78, State: normal
Current Data-Rates/Speed: basic6 9 basic12 18 basic24 36 48 54
Last Adoption: 0 days 20:55:16 ago

Configuration:
Adoption-pref-id: 0
Max-mobile-unit: 256, Detector: N, On-channel-scan: N
WLAN-BSS mapping: [BSS 1]: 1
RTS-thres: 2346 bytes, Beacon-intvl: 100 K-uSec
Dtim-count: [BSS 1]: 10 beacons
Dtim-count: [BSS 2]: 10 beacons
Dtim-count: [BSS 3]: 10 beacons
Dtim-count: [BSS 4]: 10 beacons
CCA level: 1, CCA Mode: 1, mobile-unit power: 0 dBm
Short-Preamble: disabled, Antenna-Mode: diversity (both antennas)
Placement: indoor, Channel-Mode: acs, Power: 20 dBm
Data-Rates/Speed: basic6 9 basic12 18 basic24 36 48 54
WMM [best-effort]: aifsn: 3 txop-limit: 0 cwmin: 4 cwmax: 6
admission-control: disabled, max-mobile-unit: 32
WMM [background]: aifsn: 7 txop-limit: 0 cwmin: 4 cwmax: 10
admission-control: disabled, max-mobile-unit: 32
WMM [video]: aifsn: 1 txop-limit: 94 cwmin: 3 cwmax: 4
admission-control: disabled, max-mobile-unit: 32
WMM [voice]: aifsn: 1 txop-limit: 47 cwmin: 2 cwmax: 3
admission-control: disabled, max-mobile-unit: 32

It doesn't look like the Motorola switch shows us the radio description above so we'll need to use another command to get the description;

WS5100# show wireless radio config 30

Radio: 30, Description: Main Building Lobby, MAC: 00-15-70-11-34-32
Radio Type: 11a, AP Type: ap300
Adoption-pref-id: 0
Max-mobile-unit: 256, Detector: N, On-channel-scan: N
WLAN-BSS mapping: [BSS 1]: 1
RTS-thres: 2346 bytes, Beacon-intvl: 100 K-uSec
Dtim-count: [BSS 1]: 10 beacons
Dtim-count: [BSS 2]: 10 beacons
Dtim-count: [BSS 3]: 10 beacons
Dtim-count: [BSS 4]: 10 beacons
CCA level: 1, CCA Mode: 1, mobile-unit power: 0 dBm
Short-Preamble: disabled, Antenna-Mode: diversity (both antennas)
Placement: indoor, Channel-Mode: acs, Power: 20 dBm
Data-Rates/Speed: basic6 9 basic12 18 basic24 36 48 54
WMM [best-effort]: aifsn: 3 txop-limit: 0 cwmin: 4 cwmax: 6
admission-control: disabled, max-mobile-unit: 32
WMM [background]: aifsn: 7 txop-limit: 0 cwmin: 4 cwmax: 10
admission-control: disabled, max-mobile-unit: 32
WMM [video]: aifsn: 1 txop-limit: 94 cwmin: 3 cwmax: 4
admission-control: disabled, max-mobile-unit: 32
WMM [voice]: aifsn: 1 txop-limit: 47 cwmin: 2 cwmax: 3
admission-control: disabled, max-mobile-unit: 32

So it looks like the device we're looking for, wireless-laptop.acme.org (10.1.193.55), is connected to radio 30 (802.11a) which has a description of "Main Building Lobby". While this will give you an idea of the basic location it doesn't provide you a specific location. While there are new APIs in the WS5100 and RFS7000 that can provide locationing by means of triangulation between multiple Access Ports, they require external applications and management software.

Obviously you'll need to make sure that you've put descriptive locations on each radio (AP300) through the Motorola console when configuring/installing the APs.

Cheers!