Aironet / IOS 12.3(7)JA and future memory usage

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Uli Link 21 years ago

This morning I installed 12.3(7)JA in my lab environment and all seems to work, fine.

*But:*

air-250#sh mem free Head Total(b) Used(b) Free(b) Lowest(b) Largest(b) Processor A75064 4229020 3246188 *982832* *744848* 881144 I/O E80000 1572864 336280 1236584 1179376 1229628

The Free processor memory is *very* low, older released barked about low memory watermark with much more free RAM left.

This is a 1120B AP acting as WDS for 4 APs. Radio disabled, no SSID defined. In an environment with 10 - 25 APs and 20 or 30 mobile stations registered to the WDS, you'll probably ran into low memory problems soon.

Network Map is disabled, HTTPS is disabled, SSH disabled, SNMP is disabled, no VLANs, no local RADIUS... The 1100 and 1200 platforms are not RAM upgradeable :-( And I cannot recommend a device which needs SNMP stay disabled.

Will there ever be a LD/GD release fitting into the 16MB? Or at least: will there be security-fix only rebuilds of older releases like

12.3(2)JA2 which had more the 2000000 bytes free processor mem left, with HTTPS and SSH running (And as secondary NTP peer). If I extrapolate the rise of memory footprint from release to release for upcoming 12.3(8)JA or maximum 12.3(11)JA, there will be a serious problem.

On the other hand security issues weren't fixed in the earlier releases.

What are the opinions of other WLAN admin's/solution providers/users?

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Aaron Leonard 21 years ago

Uli,

You've raised an interesting topic. I'll talk with the Aironet product managers and see what our IOS strategy is for the 16MB APs.

Regards,

Aaron

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Uli Link 21 years ago

Aaron Leonard schrieb:

THX Aaron,

For me the feature set of 12.3(2)JA2 is very mature. And if APs have 10+ weeks uptime without a single traceback, I consider they would run stable. At the moment all published security issues (aaa none fallback, and IPv6???) can be mitigated by simple workarounds. My favourite Workhorse/config-and-forget configuration.

For many warehouse or logistics applications installations with less/equal 20 APs are common. Those customers won't buy the expensive WLSE or WLAN switch solution. (but ask me why I recommend Cisco instead of D-Link, Netgear, Linksys or even cheaper) A dedicated 1120/1230 AP did this job very well in past, and for the larger installations (100+ APs) in industrial production the "switch" solutions or thing like the AirWave Manager are more becoming more and more applicable today.

But there may be other demands for Hotspot or multimedia applications, I can't speak for. Others out there?

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Uli Link 21 years ago

Aaron Leonard schrieb:

I have just downloaded the newly posted IOS 12.3(2)JA5 and 12.3(4)JA1 and will go through the Release Notes now. So I can live *very* well without 12.3(7)JA :-)

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Aaron Leonard 21 years ago

~ > Uli, ~ > ~ > You've raised an interesting topic. I'll talk with the ~ > Aironet product managers and see what our IOS strategy ~ > is for the 16MB APs. ~ ~ I have just downloaded the newly posted IOS 12.3(2)JA5 and 12.3(4)JA1 ~ and will go through the Release Notes now. ~ So I can live *very* well without 12.3(7)JA :-)

OK, let's hope so. You will see, after reading the 2JA5 / 4JA1 release notes, that these releases only include one housekeeping fix (CSCei76358) beyond the previous builds.

Regards,

Aaron

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Uli Link 21 years ago

Aaron Leonard schrieb:

I have not any clue what was in the (never public released) builds

12.3(2)JA3 and JA4 ;-)

Was hoping CSCsa90418 was fixed in 4JA1, but it is not. It is only assigned severity 3, but I tried both suggested workarounds without success and using a WDS AP in another subnet is major feature working in any other release than 12.3(4)JAx

12.3(7)JA didn't only have the low mem issue on my WDS AP, I had a lot of tracebacks and for the very first time I found crashinfo file in flash: on the 1200 APs.

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Aaron Leonard 21 years ago

~ > OK, let's hope so. You will see, after reading the 2JA5 / 4JA1 release ~ > notes, that these releases only include one housekeeping fix (CSCei76358) ~ > beyond the previous builds. ~ ~ I have not any clue what was in the (never public released) builds ~ 12.3(2)JA3 and JA4 ;-)

I *suspected* that you were going to ask that (hard to sneak much past you.) Those numbers were assigned to bootloader builds.

~ Was hoping CSCsa90418 was fixed in 4JA1, but it is not. ~ It is only assigned severity 3, but I tried both suggested workarounds ~ without success and using a WDS AP in another subnet is major feature ~ working in any other release than 12.3(4)JAx

FWIW, I believe that we state that it is not supported to have a WDS AP in a different subnet from its infrastructure APs.

~ 12.3(7)JA didn't only have the low mem issue on my WDS AP, I had a lot ~ of tracebacks and for the very first time I found crashinfo file in ~ flash: on the 1200 APs.

Well, 12.3(7)JA does have its issues. One I would like to highlight here, in case it will allow someone to avoid some pain, is CSCej08390 Reboot loop with snmp-server ifindex persist configured

Going forward, here's the plan for "autonomous" (JA train) IOS on the APs:

- there will be no more major feature enhancements for the 16MB APs, beyond what they have in 12.3(7)JA.

- major new JA-train features will be available only in images for the

32MB APs.

Regards,

Aaron

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