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Collection

Wireless devices are collected through their controller or cloud dashboard, not by contacting each AP. How you set that up depends on the vendor: Cisco Catalyst 9800 and Aruba controllers are collected over the CLI as regular devices; Cisco Meraki and Juniper Mist are collected through their cloud APIs.

Cisco Catalyst 9800 WLC​

A Catalyst 9800 WLC is added like any other CLI device, on the Classic devices tab under Sources → Network devices, using a Cisco IOS-XE connection and a CLI credential. Forward detects the wireless management configuration during collection and runs the AP-related commands automatically.

Prerequisites

  • A Forward Collector that can reach the WLC over SSH.
  • A CLI credential for the WLC — pick an existing one or add it inline from the add-device form.
  • The WLC running IOS-XE 17.x or later (16.x skips AP collection — see below).

Access point modeling​

When Forward detects wireless configuration on the collected IOS-XE device, it parses the AP summary and creates one device per AP, named <controller>_<apName>, sharing the collected state. This happens automatically when the organization has peripheral license capacity for the APs — there is no manual toggle. See Licensing.

note

Without peripheral capacity, the WLC's APs are not modeled. The WLC is still collected — the AP commands run and their output is available through custom commands and NQE — but Forward does not create AP devices, the WLC is modeled as a plain IOS-XE device rather than a controller, and wireless clients do not appear as hosts. A path sourced from a wireless client's IP then localizes to the wired gateway that owns the client's subnet (or returns no path if none does), rather than starting at an AP.

Commands collected​

The AP commands Forward runs on the WLC are listed under Cisco IOS-XE in the CLI Commands reference. They are issued only on IOS-XE 17.x and later; the collector does not run them on 16.x, where they fail, so APs are not collected from a 16.x WLC.

Cisco Meraki​

Meraki wireless (MR access points) is collected through the Meraki Dashboard, alongside MS switches and MX appliances. In the cloud-managed wizard (Add a cloud-managed infra), select Cisco Meraki on the Select a vendor step. See Cloud-Managed Device Collection for the full setup wizard.

Setup inputs

  • A Meraki setup name.
  • A Region, which determines the Dashboard API endpoint.
  • Meraki login credentials and a stored API key.
  • A Dashboard security code when Meraki prompts for one.
note

Two-factor authentication must be disabled for the Dashboard account used for collection. Forward uses Meraki's private Dashboard APIs — the same ones the Dashboard UI uses — which require an interactive, non-2FA login rather than an API key alone. When 2FA is mandated at the organization level, this blocks collection; the workaround is a dedicated Dashboard account with 2FA disabled. Some data is not available through Meraki's public API, so an API key by itself is not sufficient.

Juniper Mist (Tech Preview)​

Mist wireless is collected through the Mist cloud in the cloud-managed wizard: select Juniper Mist on the Select a vendor step, enter credentials, run a connectivity test from the collector, select the discovered devices, and collect. Mist devices are modeled as access points. The Juniper Mist option appears only when Mist onboarding is enabled, matching its Tech Preview status.

Setup inputs

  • A Mist setup name.
  • A Region, which determines the API endpoint.
  • An API key for the Mist organization.

Aruba WLAN controller​

An Aruba WLAN controller (7000/7200 Series) or Mobility Access Control Switch is added on the Classic devices tab under Sources → Network devices, using an Aruba Controller SSH connection and a CLI credential. Forward collects the controller and the AP inventory, client, and datapath data it reports, but does not model the APs as separate devices.

Because the APs are not modeled, wireless clients attach to the controller rather than to an AP: each ESSID is a tunnel interface on the controller, and a client is a host on that interface (for an Instant AP, on the AP's VPN-link tunnel interface). A path sourced from an Aruba wireless client's IP therefore starts at the controller — there is no AP device for it to originate from. This differs from Cisco and Meraki, where the client attaches to its modeled AP device and the path starts there. See How wireless is modeled.

Prerequisites

  • A Forward Collector that can reach the controller over SSH.
  • A CLI credential for the controller — pick an existing one or add it inline from the add-device form.
note

Devices running ArubaOS-CX are collected as switches, not through this wireless controller path — they use a separate ArubaOS-CX switch connection. Adding an ArubaOS-CX device as a wireless controller can fail during collection because the two paths expect different CLI prompts.