Ruckus Wireless MAC Addresses

[howartp]

Does anyone know how Ruckus wireless MAC addresses work?

 

I'm doing a WiFi site survey which shows me the MAC address(es) of all the APs it can find, but none of the MAC addresses it gives me tie up to the MAC addresses of the APs listed in Ruckus ZoneDirector.

 

The AP in my office is c4:10:8a:18:22:80 but InSSIDer v4 shows two WLANs beginning c4:10:8a:18:__:__ whereas it should be broadcasting about 7 WLANs; other MAC addresses have several of the other WLANs showing.

 

Is there a way of calculating/identifying what the 'root' MAC address of a given AP is from the broadcast MAC's? Although my office ends in 80 the two broadcasts happen to be 8C and 8D, it doesn't hold true for other APs.

 

I can see 54:3D:37:7A:4C:0D and :0C on InSSIDer but none of my AP's in ZoneDirector contain '7A' anywhere in their MAC address.

 

I'm confused

 

Peter

[Davit2005]

Wouldn't there be 2 MAC addresses one for each WLAN radio on an AP and one for LAN on an AP

 

Now I'm confused

 

Is insider looking at the WiFi side and ZoneDirector looking at the LAN side of the access points.

 

Installed Ruckus at previous employment with a 1100 Zone Director and in the Access Points area it had the MAC addresses, Device Name etc.

Edited February 18, 2015 by Davit2005

[howartp]

You might be right about each radio, but it's the Access Points area I'm looking at.

 

I haven't found anywhere that ties up any of the addresses.

[andyire]

Why don't you just setup a test SSID on the Ruckus AP I.e. WirelessSurvey.... attach the ruckus AP to a mic stand. Place the AP in a classroom, plugin using PoE injector, long cat5 cable etc.... Then walk away from the AP to adjacent classes etc.. Then using insider you can find the SSID test signal strength (-60db or less) and bandwidth ...

[howartp]

Why don't you just setup a test SSID on the Ruckus AP I.e. WirelessSurvey.... attach the ruckus AP to a mic stand. Place the AP in a classroom, plugin using PoE injector, long cat5 cable etc.... Then walk away from the AP to adjacent classes etc.. Then using insider you can find the SSID test signal strength (-60db or less) and bandwidth ...

 

Because we already did that 18 months ago before we got the wireless installed, to give us an idea where to put the APs.

 

They've been installed since Summer 2013 and we've only had a handful of queries about wifi range in certain areas, so before we go full scale BYOD with the kids later this year, we want to cover off those areas - a full site survey was supposed to happen shortly after we deployed the wireless, and indeed we bought the software and hardware for it (intending to re-do the survey every now and again) but it never actually got done.

 

Davit2005's mention of radio MAC addresses has given me an idea to follow up - I just couldn't work out what was happening, but now I've realised it's probably per-radio within the AP, I hope to make more sense of what I'm seeing.

 

Peter

[howartp]

I've just logged into the ZoneDirector and looked in the Monitor page (rather than Config page) of the APs, and found the attached section within each AP.

 

This one is in our IT Office (as above) with root MAC address c4:10:8a:18:22:80

 

The four BSSIDs shown are c4:10:8a:__:22:8_ where the first __ is 18, 58, 98 and d8, so +40 each time, so I suspect the same logic will apply to the four BSSID's of any other AP. This would explain why I couldn't see :7a: in the results earlier.

 

I'll have a proper look tomorrow based on this info.

 

Peter