Aruba Central Foundation On-Premises Access Point License (5-Year, 1 AP)

This 5-year Aruba Central Foundation On-Premises Access Point License subscription enables a range of configuration, management, security, and monitoring software tools and services for your compatible access point. This license applies to a single on-premises managed Aruba access point, and additional licenses may be required to support more APs.

Configuration & Management

AP Configuration

Network administrators can manage APs through the Aruba Instant UI, Aruba Central, or AirWave management system. Templates in Aruba Central refer to a set of configuration commands that can be used by the administrators for provisioning devices in a group. Configuration templates enable administrators to apply a set of configuration parameters simultaneously to multiple devices in a group and thus automate AP deployments.

Auto-Commit

Aruba Central supports a two-staged configuration commit workflow for Instant APs. When the auto-commit state is enabled for a group, the configuration changes are instantly applied to all devices where the auto-commit state is enabled.

Configuration Audit

In Aruba Central, the Configuration Audit page provides an audit dashboard for reviewing configuration changes of the devices provisioned in the UI and template groups. The Configuration Audit page allows you to view configuration push errors, template synchronization errors, configuration sync, and device-level configuration overrides.

Monitoring & Reporting

Access, Spectrum, Monitor Mode of Radio Operations

In the Access mode, the Instant AP serves clients, while also monitoring for rogue Instant APs in the background. In the Monitor mode, the Instant AP acts as a dedicated monitor, scanning all channels for rogue Instant APs and clients. In the Spectrum mode, the Instant AP functions as a dedicated full-spectrum RF monitor, scanning all channels to detect interference, whether from the neighboring Instant APs or from non Wi-Fi devices such as microwaves and cordless phones.

Alerts and Events

The Alerts and Events dashboard displays a list of alerts and events generated for events pertaining to device provisioning, configuration, and user management. You can view the alerts and events in the List view and Summary view. Configuration view is used to configure alerts and is available only at the Global context.

Application Visibility

Application Visibility is a custom-built Layer-7 firewall capability in Aruba Central that allows you to create firewall policies based on the types of applications in IAPs. Application Visibility provides features like deep packet inspection, application monitoring, and Air Slice Policy. The Application Visibility feature is a part of a Foundation License. However, as API streaming is available for Advanced Licenses only, the Application Visibility streaming service is supported only for APs with an Advanced License.

Audit Trail

The Audit Trail page in Aruba Central shows the total number of logs generated for all device management, configuration, and user management events triggered in the network.

Client List & Details

The Clients page is also called the unified clients list and it provides a list of all clients that are connected to access points, switches, or gateways in the network. The List and Summary views under the Clients tab serve as dashboards. It displays details about the network performance, client connection status, instantaneous client refresh, Go Live (only AP), and other information required for monitoring the clients.

Floorplans

Floorplans allow you to plan sites, create and manage floorplans, and provision access points. Floorplans provide a real-time picture of the radio environment of your wireless network and the ability to plan the wireless coverage of new sites.

Topology

In Aruba Central, the Topology tab in the site dashboard provides a graphical representation of the site, including the network layout, details of the devices deployed, and the health of the WAN uplinks and tunnels. The topology map provides information about third-party devices and devices that are not managed by Aruba. It also provides information about orphan and offline third-party devices, and the VLANs configured on switches running AOS-S and AOS-CX software.

Web Content Classification (WebCC)

The WebCC allows you to classify website content based on reputation and take measures to block malicious sites. It fetches information about website content classification and geolocation of IPs. The IP reputation database contains known IP addresses associated with various malicious activities or threats such as botnet, DOS, and spam sources. The geolocation IP database contains the geographical location of the IP address from where the traffic is received or to which the traffic is sent. This provides geolocation and reputation filtering as part of the security suite.

Wi-Fi Connectivity

The Wi-Fi Connectivity page displays an overall view of the connection details for all clients that are connected to or tried to connect to each connection phase.

AI Operations

AI Insights

The AI Insights dashboard displays a report of network events that could possibly affect the quality of the overall network performance. These are anomalies observed at the access point, connectivity, and client level for the selected time range. Each insight provides specific details on the occurrences of these events for easy debugging.

Different types of insights are generated by Aruba Central and they can be accessed from different contexts such as Global, Site, Clients, and Device. Some of the insights are part of an Advanced License only and they are marked as Advanced in the user interface.

AI Search

The AI search feature in Aruba Central enables you to search for clients, devices, and infrastructure connected to the network. Using the search results, you can navigate to the configuration and troubleshooting pages. The search also retrieves relevant documentation to help you efficiently operate your networks. The search engine uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze queries and return relevant search results.

Dynamic Logs

The Dynamic Logs feature enables Aruba Central to dynamically run CLI show commands on APs and gateways, and collect the output as logs. You can also enable Aruba support notification option to notify TAC support regarding the logs generated. These logs can be used to troubleshoot the APs and gateways.

Troubleshooting

Live Events

The clients Live Events page shows information required to troubleshoot issues related to a client or a site in real time for detailed analysis.

Live Packet Capture (PCAP)

Aruba Central allows users to interact and launch a targeted packet capture on a client connected to a specific AP or a switch. When the user starts packet capture from the UI, Aruba Central notifies the AP and the switch. The default packet capture duration is 15 minutes.

Troubleshooting Tools

The Tools menu option allows network administrators and users with troubleshooting permission to perform troubleshooting or diagnostics tests on devices and networks managed by Aruba Central.

Services

AirGroup

AirGroup is a zero-configuration networking protocol that enables service discovery, address assignment, and name resolution for desktop computers, mobile devices, and network services. It is designed for flat, single-subnet IP networks such as wireless networking at home. AirGroup supports both wired and wireless devices.

AirMatch

AirMatch channel planning evens out channel distributions in any size of network and in any subset of the contiguous network. AirMatch also minimizes channel coupling where adjacent radios are assigned to the same channel.

ClientMatch

ClientMatch continually monitors the RF neighborhood for each client to provide ongoing client band steering, load balancing, and enhanced AP reassignment for roam