Cambium cnPilot - Redirect AP from cloud to on-premises cnMaestro

Problem Description:

Zero-touch onboarding in cnPilot means an AP will automatically discover its cnMaestro controller and connect to it. For the cloud version this works by the AP looking for cloud.cambiumnetworks.com and connecting to it. For on-premises this can be done with DHCP options 15, 43 and 60.

Cause:

Cases where you are using on-premises cnMaestro but have no control over the DHCP server? This could happen if the AP was deployed at a remote site for instance behind a DSL or Cable Modem connection.

How to fix:

Until now this required the AP to be pre-provisioned with the cnMaestro URL configured using the AP CLI or GUI.

However with firmware release 3.11.2 of cnPilot this process can now be automated, and more importantly done without having to touch the AP!! Zero-touch redirection from cloud to on-premises, allowing use of the cloud account as a staging server.

The way to do this is onboard the AP to your cloud account, and from there push a configuration file with device-overrides that point the AP to your local cnMaestro on-premises instance.

Eg: if you have cnMaestro on-premises at IP 1.2.3.4, you would set the following configuration:

  management cambium-remote url 1.2.3.4

 no management cambium-remote validate-server-cert

The first line in configuration says the cnMaestro on-premises is at 1.2.3.4 and the second line tells the AP to not use certification validation of the server.

 So what will happen now is:

1. AP will connec to cloud.cambiumnetworks.com and show up in the correct account where the serial numbers for that AP have been added.
2. AP will accept configuration, with the override commands pointing it to an on-premises server.

AP will disconnect from cloud, and form a connection to the on-premises server