Why do I see two SSID's with same name and how to identify which AP is broadcasting duplicate SSID?

Summary

Why I am seeing two similar WLAN's broadcast in same location and how to identify which AP is broadcasting it?

Question

Why I am seeing two similar WLAN's(SSIDs) broadcast in same location and how to identify which AP is broadcasting it?

Customer Environment

AP, ZD

Root Cause

Two AP's in same location were mapped to different WLAN groups containing common WLAN.

Troubleshooting Steps

Customer reported us an issue where they were seeing two similar SSIDs on a Laptop.Customer was unable to identify which AP was broadcasting that SSIDs as there were multiple AP's in that location and there were multiple WLAN Groups configured. It requires to check each WLAN group and then find out which WLAN Group has mapped common WLAN. Subsequently we have to find all AP's which are mapped to the WLAN Group that contains duplicate WLAN.

Resolution

Using inSSIDer(or similar utility) installed on a Laptop, we got the BSSID for the two SSIDs. A BSSID is a unique identifier which is derived from the AP's MAC address by incrementing the last number under the last octet of the AP's MAC address.

For Example If the AP's physical MAC address is 8c:0c:90:1f:a9:30 The BSSID would be 8c:0c:90:1f:a9:3X. Where X could be any hexadecimal number.

We subsequently looked for the first 5 octet of the BSSID under Monitoring>Access Point and we found the AP which was broadcasting one of the BSSIDs. We confirmed from the AP configuration that same AP was broadcasting the duplicate WLAN.
We removed the duplicate WLAN from the WLAN Group and subsequently duplicate SSID disappeared.

Article Number:
000004312

Updated:
May 06, 2021 01:21 AM (over 3 years ago)

Tags:
Troubleshooting, ZoneDirector, ZoneFlex Indoor

Votes:
2

This article is:
helpful
not helpful