The joys of big cities and WiFi....

[XavierMace]

Client calls in complaining that they're having trouble with their WiFi in their HQ on the 4th and 5th floors of a high rise in LA. They've got a pair of Cisco 2500 series WLC's, and half a dozen Cisco Aironet 2602i's per floor. Onsite engineer starts testing and finds out he's having trouble getting any signal from ~20ft from an AP so issue gets escalated to me.

I log into the WLC and the first thing I see:

Rogue Summary
Active Rogue APs: 952
Active Rogue Clients: 8
Adhoc Rogues: 44

LOL. I start looking through the list. In addition to the usual suspects of other nearby businesses, there's a dozen MiFi's, 2 food trucks, a dozen commuter cars (IE new Chevy Cruize's), presumably in the underground garage. I told the client I'd recommend just encasing the office in lead.

Begun the signal wars have.

I can't help but wonder just how much of a signal the cars are putting out to get picked up by our WLC's. Now they get to start playing the escalating who's got a stronger signal game.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Huh. "Rogue AP" being any other AP in the neighborhood, whos signal is picked up by your APs? Not just an unauthorized wireless AP plugged into your wired LAN?

 

[Rifter]

They need to seriously work on their security if 952 people were able to setup rouge AP's on their network. Like wow. Thats unbelievable. Did they make the password "password"?

 

[XavierMace]

That doesn't indicate that the AP is on the network, just that your AP's can "hear" it.

 

[PliotronX]

What is the viability of just placing the Cisco APs on grounded steel or something? Have you looked in to Ruckus APs? They have an intriguing ability to deal with interference even from non-Wi-Fi transmissions.