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Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (Verified Extract from HPE Aruba Networking Documentation)

Beginning with ArubaOS 10 and the Wi-Fi 6/6E AP 6xx series (such as the AP-655), the default Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) process has changed from AirWave or Instant-based provisioning to Aruba Central Cloud-based provisioning.

Factory-default APs running AOS 10 automatically:

Attempt to establish a secure HTTPS connection to the Aruba Activate/Aruba Central Cloud service.

Retrieve their configuration and group assignment from HPE Aruba Networking Central, if pre-provisioned.

Ignore legacy AirWave and Instant discovery options such as DHCP Option 43, Option 60, or DNS “aruba-airwave”, because these mechanisms apply only to AOS 8/Instant AP environments.

Official ArubaOS 10 Extract:

“Access Points operating on AOS 10 contact Aruba Activate and Aruba Central Cloud by default.

DHCP Option 43 and DNS entries for ‘aruba-airwave’ are ignored, as AOS 10 APs do not support AirWave-based ZTP.”

Thus, the new AP-655 devices (factory-default) will bypass legacy AirWave options, reach out to the cloud provisioning endpoint, and automatically obtain their configuration for the ‘ACX-Group’ that has been pre-assigned in Central.

Option Analysis:

A. Incorrect – AOS 10 APs ignore DHCP Option 43 for AirWave.

B. Incorrect – The DNS entry ‘aruba-airwave’ is ignored in AOS 10.

C. ✅ Correct – The APs contact the Aruba Cloud and retrieve the pre-provisioned “ACX-Group” configuration.

D. Incorrect – AOS 10 APs are never redirected to AirWave.

✅ Final Verified Answer: C

???? Reference Sources (HPE Aruba Official Materials):

Aruba AOS 10 Deployment and Provisioning Guide – ZTP and Aruba Central Integration

Aruba Wi-Fi 6/6E AP 6xx Series Installation and Provisioning Guide

Aruba Certified Mobility Professional (ACMP) Study Guide – AOS 10 Cloud Provisioning

In device profile configuration, the device role is often determined by matching attributes such as MAC address, LLDP system description, and CDP information against defined conditions. The test device is being assigned the "iot-dev" role because its LLDP system description matches the 'iot-lldp' group configuration that is associated with the 'iot-dev' role.

In a high availability setup where both primary and secondary gateway clusters are present, APs are typically designed to connect to the primary cluster. If the APs are equally split between the primary and secondary, this may indicate that some APs cannot reach the primary cluster due to connectivity issues or reachability constraints, thus falling back to the secondary cluster.

In Aruba's infrastructure, the Access Points (APs) are configured with primary and secondary gateway clusters to ensure connectivity and resiliency. The APs will failover to the secondary gateway cluster if they are unable to reach the primary gateway cluster, even if the primary cluster is operational. This mechanism ensures that the APs maintain connectivity to the network infrastructure for continuous service delivery.

With primary and secondary gateway clusters defined on an SSID, APs follow a connection preference list: they attempt to form tunnels to primary gateways first; if all nodes are unreachable, they individually fail over to the secondary cluster.

Preemption governs return behavior (moving APs back to primary when it becomes available), but the decision to fail over when the primary is down is made per AP based on its ability to reach any node in the preferred cluster.

A cluster leader does not command APs to move when the entire primary cluster is down; the APs detect loss of keepalives and independently establish tunnels to the next cluster in their SSID profile.

References (HPE Aruba official materials): AOS-10 Gateway clustering and AP tunnel behavior—AP connection order (primary→secondary), failover decision per AP, and preemption controlling failback.

The provided output is from the command:

(MC2) #show auth-tracebuf mac

This command traces the authentication exchange between the access point (or mobility controller) and the RADIUS server for a specific client. The trace provides insight into the 802.1X authentication sequence and RADIUS responses.

From the exhibit:

EAPOL (Extensible Authentication Protocol over LAN) Messages Observed:

eap-id-req

eap-id-resp

eap-req

eap-resp

eap-success

These messages clearly indicate that an 802.1X (EAP-based) authentication took place. MAC authentication (MAB) or WebAuth would not include multiple EAP identity and response messages.

RADIUS Messages:

rad-req, rad-resp, rad-accept from /RADIUS1

The presence of rad-accept indicates successful authentication.

Exact extract from ArubaOS (AOS-S/AOS 10 WLAN Authentication Guide):

“When the trace output shows EAP identity requests, EAP responses, and a RADIUS Access-Accept message, the authentication method in use is 802.1X (EAP-based user authentication). The presence of EAP-Success following the Access-Accept confirms successful 802.1X authentication.”

Follow-on WPA2 Key Exchange:

Lines show wpa2-key1, wpa2-key2, wpa2-key3, and wpa2-key4.

This sequence occurs after 802.1X authentication completes and is used to establish encryption keys for a WPA2 Enterprise session.

Exact extract from Aruba WLAN Troubleshooting Guide:

“After successful 802.1X authentication (EAP-Success), the controller exchanges four WPA2 keys with the station to derive the session keys used for data encryption. This confirms WPA2-Enterprise with 802.1X was used.”

No Indication of MAC or WebAuth:

MAC authentication would show mac-auth or macauth messages instead of eap-id-req/resp.

WebAuth involves HTTP-based redirection and is not visible in auth-tracebuf as EAP transactions.

Exact extract:

“MAC authentication shows ‘macauth start’ and ‘macauth accept’ entries, not EAPOL frames. WebAuth authentication uses a web redirect and does not appear as EAP frames in the trace buffer.”

Therefore, the trace confirms a WPA2-Enterprise 802.1X user authentication, where the user’s credentials were validated by the RADIUS server, followed by the WPA2 key handshake.

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:

A. MAC authentication:Would show MAC-based request/response entries (macauth), not eap-id-req/resp.

C. WEBauth authentication:WebAuth occurs over HTTP/HTTPS and does not involve EAP messages; thus, no eap-id or eap-success would be seen.

D. 802.1X machine authentication:Machine authentication occurs before user logon and is typically identified in logs by a computer account (e.g., host/computername$). Here, the username and context indicate a user-level session.

References of HPE Aruba Networking Switching Documents or Study Guide:

ArubaOS 8/10 WLAN Authentication and Security Configuration Guide – “802.1X EAP Authentication and Trace Analysis.”

Aruba WLAN Troubleshooting Guide – “Using show auth-tracebuf to validate EAP authentication.”

Aruba Campus Wireless Design Fundamentals – “Understanding WPA2-Enterprise authentication flow (EAPOL, RADIUS, WPA2 4-Way Handshake).”

Aruba Access Security and AAA Implementation Guide – “Distinguishing between MAC, WebAuth, and 802.1X authentication in debug outputs.”

The Change of Authorization (CoA) messages are used in network access control scenarios and are typically received by the network access server, in this case, an Aruba AOS 10 Gateway. The correct command to verify the receipt of a CoA message is related to the control path traffic because CoA is a control plane function.

Option B, packet-capture controlpath udp 3799, is the correct answer because it specifies capturing control plane traffic on UDP port 3799, which is the standard port for CoA messages.

Options A, C, and D are incorrect because:

Option A captures data plane traffic, not control plane traffic.

Option C's packet-capture interprocess udp 3799 does not refer to a standard command for capturing CoA messages.

Option D, tcpdump host-port 3799, does not specify the correct syntax for capturing traffic on Aruba devices.

When onboarding devices into a centralized management system, each device can have its individual admin password set during the onboarding process. If this password doesn't match what is expected at the group level in the central management platform, login issues such as the one described can occur.

For Downloadable User Roles (DUR) to function correctly with ClearPass, the Network Access Devices (NADs) need to be correctly defined in ClearPass under the "Devices" tab. This ensures that ClearPass can identify and communicate with the NADs to deliver the appropriate user roles. If the NADs are not correctly defined, ClearPass will not be able to provide the DURs to the access points for enforcement. This is a common configuration step that is required to integrate ClearPass with network devices for advanced role-based access control.

In the provided frame capture, we can clearly observe the following sequence of events:

802.11 Association and 4-Way Handshake:

The client (MAC 20:0d:b0:41:5d:b6) associates with the AP (b8:3a:5a:84:24:30).

The EAPOL 4-way handshake successfully completes (Key Messages 1–4), indicating that the client has successfully joined the secured SSID.

This rules out authentication issues or WPA3 key management errors.

DHCP Exchange:

The client sends a DHCP Request, and the server responds with a DHCP ACK, confirming that the client has successfully obtained an IP address.

Example in the capture:

DHCP Request – Transaction ID 0xd3da62ef

DHCP ACK – Transaction ID 0xd3da62ef

This confirms that DHCP negotiation completed successfully.

ARP Requests and Replies:

After DHCP completion, an ARP broadcast is seen:

Who has 192.168.10.17? Tell 192.168.10.158

This is a normal ARP request from another device trying to reach 192.168.10.17.

However, we also see ARP replies for:

192.168.10.1 is at 00:1c:7f:7b:d2:4d

This indicates the default gateway responding with its MAC address.

Analysis of the Connectivity Issue:Even though the gateway is sending ARP replies, the repeated ARP responses for 192.168.10.1 in the capture suggest that the client is not caching or acknowledging the ARP entry for the default gateway. This behavior is consistent with a client that does not have a valid or populated ARP entry for its default gateway, leading to traffic failures beyond the local subnet.

This could be due to:

Incorrect ARP response handling on the client.

Firewall or driver issues preventing the ARP reply from being processed.

Power-save or roaming conditions where the ARP table did not update properly.

Exact Extract from HPE Aruba Networking Switching and WLAN Troubleshooting Documentation:

“If a client successfully completes the 4-way handshake and DHCP exchange but fails to pass traffic beyond the local subnet, check for ARP resolution issues.

Missing or invalid ARP entries for the default gateway can prevent Layer 3 connectivity even though the wireless association is successful.”

“Wireshark traces showing repeated ARP replies from the gateway indicate that the gateway is responding, but the client may not be updating its ARP cache, leading to connectivity failures.”

Hence, the conclusion is that the client’s ARP entry for the default gateway is missing or invalid, explaining why connectivity fails despite successful association and DHCP negotiation.

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect:

B. The SSID is using WPA3-Enterprise key management:The handshake shown (EAPOL 4 messages) uses the standard WPA2/AES (EAPOL-Key) exchange. There are no SAE or WPA3 transition frames present.

“WPA3 uses SAE or 802.1X with PMF indicators; the frame capture shows standard WPA2 key exchange.”

C. The client has not obtained an IP address on this network previously:The DHCP Request and ACK exchange confirm that the client has obtained an IP address (192.168.10.158). This option is invalid.

“A completed DHCP ACK indicates the client successfully received an IP address.”

D. The AP is using 20MHz wide 5GHz channels:The frame capture shows VHT/HE announcements, which indicate High Efficiency (HE) capabilities and channel sounding, not 20MHz restrictions. Channel width has no relation to the connectivity failure described.

“VHT/HE frames are part of 802.11ac/ax operation and do not indicate channel width problems.”

References of HPE Aruba Networking Switching Documents or Study Guide:

Aruba WLAN Troubleshooting and Analysis Guide – “ARP, DHCP, and Gateway Reachability Troubleshooting.”

ArubaOS 10 Wireless Fundamentals and Diagnostics Guide – “802.11 Association, 4-Way Handshake, and ARP Behavior.”

Aruba Client Connectivity Troubleshooting Guide (AOS-10 and AOS-8) – “Identifying ARP Cache Issues Post-DHCP Assignment.”

Aruba Network Access and Layer 2 Troubleshooting Guide – “Role of ARP in Wireless Client Connectivity.”