Our school district requested the installation of one outdoor access point at each of our schools with the purpose of creating a muster point for emergency responders. After consulting with our VAR, we purchased Cisco IW3702 access points. Once they arrived I decided it was best to configure the access points before sending them to the cable crew to install. The AP needs to receive updated firmware and I could name and assign each one to its location. Easy right? After all you plug the AP into a POE switch and the controller updates the firmware and then you assign it to a group for the configuration.
This access point taught me something new. It found the controller and received the firmware update, but then it started cycling red-green-off. I could see it in the controller and when I went to the advanced tab of the AP it showed Country Code UX and Universal Prime Status Unprimed. Cisco documentation stated the AP was waiting to be primed. Time to learn how to prime an AP because this one doesn’t know what country it is in yet.
The IW3702 is a Universal Access Point and must be primed to set the domain and country configuration. Basically it doesn’t know what country it is in so you have to tell it. There were directions for automatic priming and manual priming. You must already have a universal AP in your country for automatic priming. Since we didn’t have any other universal APs it was necessary to manually prime the first one.
Steps for Manual Priming:
- Create a WLAN called Universal. Radio Policy must be 802.11b/g only. Security should be WPA+WPA2 with WPA2 Policy and AES boxes checked. I set authentication as PSK and set a password.
- Check the Universal AP Admin box under the advanced tab of the WLAN. It will be on the right side about half way down.
- Create an AP group called UniversalAP-Priming. Fill in the NAS-ID.
- Add the AP to the new group
- Download and install the Cisco AirProvision APP on phone
- Connect phone to Universal WLAN
- Open Cisco AirProvision APP and login with your CCO credentials – account you login with at Cisco.com
- Login to Universal AP with your wireless controller account
- Click Configure
The process above is only necessary for the first universal AP. Additional APs will get their country from the AP you just configured.
I created a separate WLAN instead of checking the Universal AP Admin box on an existing WLAN because of our environment. You must be connected to the universal AP to configure it and my phone kept joining the other ones in the area instead of the Universal AP.
