• AP 802.1X supplicant feature supported in Cisco Wave 2 APs—In the 802.1X authentication scenario between an AP and a Cisco switch, the AP acts as an 802.1X supplicant and is authenticated by the switch using Extensible Authentication Protocol-Flexible Authentication via Secure Tunneling (EAP-FAST) with anonymous Protected Access Credentials (PAC) provisioning. From this release, this feature is available in Cisco Wave 2 APs too.

  For more information, see the "AP 802.1X Supplicant" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

  For more information about IEEE 802.1X port-based authentication, see the "Configuring IEEE 802.1X Port-Based Authentication" chapter in the 802.1X Authentication Services Configuration Guide, Cisco IOS Release 15E.

• Upgrade Cisco AP and WLC software using Rolling AP Upgrade—In Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.3, you can upgrade Cisco AP and WLC software using the Rolling AP Upgrade feature. To prevent APs from rebooting simultaneously, you can instead add APs to upgrade groups. The AP upgrade groups reboot sequentially in the order of your preference.

  For more information, see the "Upgrade Controller Software using Rolling AP Upgrade" section in the Cisco Prime Infrastructure 3.3 User Guide.

• Spectrum Intelligence on Cisco Aironet 18x0 and 1540 Series APs—In this release, Spectrum Intelligence is supported in Cisco Aironet 18x0 and 1540 Series APs.

  For more information, see the "Configuring Spectrum Intelligence" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

• CMX FastLocate on Cisco Aironet 2800 and 3800 Series APs—In this release, CMX FastLocate is supported in Cisco Aironet 2800 and 3800 Series APs. For more information about CMX FastLocate, see the CMX FastLocate Deployment Guide.

Prior to this release, the NAS-ID field contained the configured NAS-ID or system name if they are not set on WLAN for inclusion in RADIUS accounting messages. In this release, the NAS-ID field is enhanced so that you can configure some key parameters such as the AP name and AP IP address for the RADIUS accounting messages.

In the controller GUI, choose Security > AAA > RADIUS > Downloaded AVP > Acct AVP to view the downloaded new RADIUS attribute.

This enhancement has the following advantages:

• Flexibility per WLAN to choose NAS ID field subtypes

• Easy to configure, store, upload, and download

• Download when a new WLAN is created; controller reboot is not required

• RADIUS AVP file in the controller can be uploaded and is persistent across reboot

For more information, see the "Custom NAS-ID for RADIUS Accounting Using Downloadable RADIUS AVP" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

Prior to this release, audit-session-id was shared across mobility peers along with pairwise master key (PMK). Whenever PMK cache is not created, for example for client security such as open authentication or web authentication, the audit-session-id is not shared. In central web authentication (CWA), the AAA server depends on the audit-session-id to identify the authenticated clients. If controller uses a new audit-session-id for authentication, the AAA server forces the client for reauthentication. In this release, a multisession ID is introduced to be used in the RADIUS server, to support intercontroller client roaming in case of open + MAC filtering with CWA.

For more information, see the "Multisession ID" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

Prior to this release, the minimum RADIUS accounting interval that you could configure was 180 seconds. In this release, the minimum interval that you can configure is 60 seconds. controller honors the Acct-Interim-Interval AVP from RADIUS and sends the accounting interim update at the configured interim interval.

For more information, see the "Timers" chapter in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

• Securing the password fields—The maximum number of characters that you can use for the password fields of the following is now set to 127:

  • Administrator user

  • Local network user

  • Local management user

  • RADIUS (authentication, accounting, and DNS) shared secret

  • TACACS+ (authentication, accounting, authorization, and DNS) shared secret

  • IPSec shared secret

  • LDAP bind

  • Local EAP

  • SXP

  Note

  If you want to downgrade from Release 8.6 to Release 8.5 or an earlier release, ensure that you have a management user account password that is less than or equal to 24 characters to be compatible with the earlier releases. Else, during the downgrade and before you can reboot the controller, you will be prompted with the following message: "Warning!!! Please Configure Mgmt user compatible with older release"

• NTP Version 4—NTP Version 4 is supported in this release. NTP Version 4 supports both IPv4 and IPv6 servers. For more information, see the "Network Time Protocol Setup" chapter in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

• SSH vulnerability addressed—Prior to this release, connections were allowed without requiring a username and password. After a connection is set up, a Telnet connection to the local host is initiated. In this release, this vulnerability is addressed, wherein a username and a password are required to allow a connection.

• EoGRE deployment with multiple TGW—Prior to this release, controller used to send keepalive pings to all the tunnel gateways (TGWs) configured on controller. In this release, keepalive pings are sent only to those TGWs that are mapped to the WLANs that are in enabled state.

  When a WLAN is disabled or deleted in controller, periodic keepalive pings are stopped to the TGW that is mapped to the WLAN.

• DHCP Option 82 for EoGRE Tunnel in Cisco Wave 2 APs—In this release, DHCP Option 82 for EoGRE Tunnel is supported in Cisco Wave 2 APs.

Some commonly collected diagnostic information of various types can be made available in a single bundle that you can upload from controller. The diagnostic information that can you can include in the bundle are core files, crash files, show run-config and config commands, msglog, and traplog.

For more information, see the "Uploading Diagnostic Support Bundle" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

Support is added to IR829 AP803 and IW3700 Series APs to configure mesh APs with lower performance to work only as a leaf node, to prevent the wireless backhaul performance from being downgraded.

For more information, see the "Configuring Mesh Leaf Node" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide.

• In Release 8.6, FlexConnect local switching ARP cache is enabled by default. Therefore, if you upgrade to Release 8.6 from an earlier release, FlexConnect local switching ARP cache, if disabled, is enabled automatically.

  If you downgrade from Release 8.6 to an earlier release, FlexConnect local switching ARP cache is disabled. If required, you must manually enable the feature on the corresponding earlier release.

• In Release 8.6, the maximum number of characters for a management user account password is changed to 127 characters. If you want to downgrade from Release 8.6 to Release 8.5 or an earlier release, ensure that your management user account password is less than or equal to 24 characters to be compatible with the earlier releases. Else, during the downgrade, before you can reboot Cisco WLC, you will be prompted with the following message:

  "Warning!!! Please Configure Mgmt user compatible with older release"

• In Release 8.6 and later releases, legacy clients that require RC4 or 3DES encryption types are not supported in Local EAP authentication.

• If you are using Release 8.4 and want to upgrade to a later release, it is necessary that you upgrade to Release 8.5.105.0 and then move to a later release.

  Note	This restriction is applicable only to Release 8.4 and not any other release.

• The filenames of Cisco Aironet 1700, 2700, 3700, and IW3702 AP software images have been changed from ap3g2-x to c3700-x format. Therefore, if you are upgrading to Release 8.5 or a later release from Release 8.3 or an earlier release, these APs will download the image twice and reboot twice.

• The AAA database size is increased from 2048 entries to 12000 entries for these Cisco WLCs: Cisco 5520 and 8540. Therefore, if you downgrade from Release 8.6 to an earlier release that does not include this enhancement, you might lose most of the AAA database configuration, including management user information. To retain at least 2048 entries, including management user information, we recommend that you follow these downgrade instructions and back up the configuration file before proceeding with the downgrade:

  1. From Release 8.6, downgrade to one of the following releases, which support 2048 database size and include the enhancement.

     • Release 8.5.105.0 or a later 8.5 release

     • Release 8.4

     • Release 8.3.102.0 or a later 8.3 release

     • Release 8.2.130.0 or a later 8.2 release

     • Release 8.0.140.0 or a later 8.0 release

  2. Downgrade to a release of your choice.

• This release supports additional configuration options for 802.11r FT enable and disable. The additional configuration option is not valid for releases earlier than Release 8.4. If you downgrade from Release 8.6 to Release 8.2 or an earlier release, the additional configuration option is invalidated and defaulted to FT disable. When you reboot Cisco WLC with the downgraded image, invalid configurations are printed on the console. We recommend that you ignore this because there is no functional impact, and the configuration defaults to FT disable.

• If you downgrade from Release 8.6 to a 7.x release, the trap configuration is lost and must be reconfigured.

• If you have an IPv6-only network and are upgrading to Release 8.4 or a later release, ensure that you perform the following activities:

  • Enable IPv4 and DHCPv4 on the network—Load a new Cisco WLC software image on all the Cisco WLCs or perform a predownload of AP images on the corresponding Cisco WLCs.

  • Reboot Cisco WLC immediately or at a preset time.

  • Ensure that all Cisco APs are associated with Cisco WLC.

  • Disable IPv4 and DHCPv4 on the network.

• After downloading the new software to the Cisco APs, it is possible that a Cisco AP may get stuck in an upgrading image state. In such a scenario, it might be necessary to forcefully reboot Cisco WLC to download a new image or to reboot Cisco WLC after the download of the new image. You can forcefully reboot Cisco WLC by entering the reset system forced command.

• It is not possible to download some of the older configurations from Cisco WLC because of the Multicast and IP address validations. See the "Restrictions on Configuring Multicast Mode" section in the Cisco Wireless Controller Configuration Guide for detailed information about platform support for global multicast and multicast mode.

• If you upgrade from Release 8.0.110.0 to a later release, the config redundancy mobilitymac mac-addr command's setting is removed. You must manually reconfigure the mobility MAC address after the upgrade.

• If you are upgrading from Release 8.0.140.0 or 8.0.15x.0 to a later release and also have the multiple country code feature configured, the feature configuration is corrupted after the upgrade. For more information, see CSCve41740.

• If you are upgrading from a 7.4.x or an earlier release to a release later than 7.4, the Called Station ID type information is mapped to the RADIUS Accounting Called Station ID type, which, by default, is set to apradio-mac-ssid. You can configure the RADIUS Authentication Called Station ID type information by using the config radius auth callStationIdType command.

• When a client sends an HTTP request, the Cisco WLC intercepts it for redirection to the login page. If the HTTP GET request that is intercepted by the Cisco WLC is longer than 2000 bytes, the Cisco WLC drops the packet. Track CSCuy81133 for a possible enhancement to address this restriction.

• We recommend that you install Cisco Wireless Controller Field Upgrade Software (FUS), which is a special AES package that contains several system-related component upgrades. These include the bootloader, field recovery image, and FPGA or MCU firmware. Installing the FUS image requires special attention because it installs some critical firmware. The FUS image is independent of the runtime image. For more information about FUS and the applicable Cisco WLC platforms, see the Field Upgrade Software release notes listing.

• When downgrading from one release to another, you might lose the configuration from your current release. The workaround is to reload the previous Cisco WLC configuration files that are saved in the backup server, or to reconfigure Cisco WLC.

• It is not possible to directly upgrade to this release from a release that is earlier than Release 7.0.98.0.

• When you upgrade Cisco WLC to an intermediate release, wait until all the APs that are associated with Cisco WLC are upgraded to the intermediate release before you install the latest Cisco WLC software. In large networks, it can take some time to download the software on each AP.

• You can upgrade to a new release of the Cisco WLC software or downgrade to an earlier release even if FIPS is enabled.

• When you upgrade to the latest software release, the software on the APs associated with Cisco WLC is also automatically upgraded. When an AP is loading software, each of its LEDs blinks in succession.

• We recommend that you access the Cisco WLC GUI using Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 or a later version, or Mozilla Firefox 32 or a later version.

• Cisco WLCs support standard SNMP MIB files. MIBs can be downloaded from the software download page on Cisco.com.

• The Cisco WLC software is factory installed on your Cisco WLC and is automatically downloaded to the APs after a release upgrade and whenever an AP joins a Cisco WLC. We recommend that you install the latest software version available for maximum operational benefit.

• Ensure that you have a TFTP, HTTP, FTP, or SFTP server available for the software upgrade. Follow these guidelines when setting up a server:

  • Ensure that your TFTP server supports files that are larger than the size of Cisco WLC software image. Some TFTP servers that support files of this size are tftpd32 and the TFTP server within Cisco Prime Infrastructure. If you attempt to download the Cisco WLC software image and your TFTP server does not support files of this size, the following error message appears:

    TFTP failure while storing in flash

  • If you are upgrading through the distribution system network port, the TFTP or FTP server can be on the same subnet or a different subnet because the distribution system port is routable.

• The Cisco WLC Bootloader stores a copy of the active primary image and the backup image. If the primary image becomes corrupted, you can use the Bootloader to boot with the backup image.

  With the backup image stored before rebooting, choose Option 2: Run Backup Image from the Boot Options menu to boot from the backup image. Then, upgrade with a known working image and reboot Cisco WLC.

• You can control the addresses that are sent in the Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) discovery responses when NAT is enabled on the Management Interface, using the following command:

  config network ap-discovery nat-ip-only {enable | disable}

  The following are the details of the command:

  enable —Enables use of NAT IP only in a discovery response. This is the default. Use this command if all the APs are outside the NAT gateway.

  disable —Enables use of both NAT IP and non-NAT IP in a discovery response. Use this command if APs are on the inside and outside the NAT gateway, for example, Local Mode and OfficeExtend APs are on the same Cisco WLC.

  Note	To avoid stranding of APs, you must disable AP link latency (if enabled) before you use the disable option in the config network ap-discovery nat-ip-only command. To disable AP link latency, use the config ap link-latency disable all command.

• Do not power down Cisco WLC or any AP during the upgrade process. If you do this, the software image might get corrupted. Upgrading Cisco WLC with a large number of APs can take as long as 30 minutes, depending on the size of your network. However, with the increased number of concurrent AP upgrades supported, the upgrade time should be significantly reduced. The APs must remain powered, and Cisco WLC must not be reset during this time.

• To downgrade from this release to Release 6.0 or an earlier release, perform either of these tasks:

  • Delete all the WLANs that are mapped to interface groups, and create new ones.

  • Ensure that all the WLANs are mapped to interfaces rather than interface groups.

• After you perform the following functions on Cisco WLC, reboot it for the changes to take effect:

  • Enable or disable LAG

  • Enable a feature that is dependent on certificates (such as HTTPS and web authentication)

  • Add a new license or modify an existing license

    Note	Reboot is not required if you are using Right-to-Use licenses.\

  • Increase the priority of a license

  • Enable HA

  • Install the SSL certificate

  • Configure the database size

  • Install the vendor-device certificate

  • Download the CA certificate

  • Upload the configuration file

  • Install the Web Authentication certificate

  • Make changes to the management interface or the virtual interface

• From Release 8.3 or a later release, ensure that the configuration file that you back up does not contain the < or > special characters. If either of the special characters is present, the download of the backed up configuration file fails.

• Cisco WLAN Express Setup Over-the-Air Provisioning

• Mobility controller functionality in converged access mode

• VPN Termination (such as IPsec and L2TP)

• Internal DHCP Server

• Mobility controller functionality in converged access mode

• VPN termination (such as IPsec and L2TP)

• Fragmented pings on any interface

• Cisco Umbrella

• Domain-based ACLs

• Internal DHCP server

• Cisco TrustSec

• Access points in local mode

• Mobility/Guest Anchor role

• Wired Guest

• Multicast

  Note	FlexConnect locally switched multicast traffic is bridged transparently for both wired and wireless on the same VLAN. FlexConnect APs do not limit traffic based on IGMP or MLD snooping.

• FlexConnect central switching in large-scale deployments

  Note	FlexConnect central switching is supported in only small-scale deployments, wherein the total traffic on controller ports is not more than 500 Mbps. FlexConnect local switching is supported.

• Central switching on Microsoft Hyper-V deployments

• AP and Client SSO in High Availability

• PMIPv6

• Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS)

• EoGRE (Supported in only local switching mode)

• Workgroup bridges

• Client downstream rate limiting for central switching

• SHA2 certificates

• controller integration with Lync SDN API

• Cisco OfficeExtend Access Points

For detailed information about feature support on Cisco Aironet Wave 2 APs, see:

Note	For Cisco Aironet 1850 Series AP technical specifications with details on currently supported features, see the Cisco Aironet 1850 Series Access Points Data Sheet.

• Load-based call admission control (CAC). Mesh networks support only bandwidth-based CAC or static CAC.

• High availability (Fast heartbeat and primary discovery join timer).

• AP acting as supplicant with EAP-FASTv1 and 802.1X authentication.

• AP join priority (Mesh APs have a fixed priority)

• Location-based services

• Dynamic Mesh backhaul data rate.

  Note	We recommend that you keep the Bridge data rate of the AP as auto.

• Background scanning

• Noise Tolerant Fast Convergence

• Flex+Mesh

• Noise Tolerant Fast Convergence

• Flex+Mesh