Aruba ACMP key terms

Effective Isotropic Radiated Power is the total energy a radio emits: transmit power plus antenna gain minus cable loss. Planners calculate it to match cell sizes and stay within regulatory limits.

Adaptive Radio Management automatically chooses channel and transmit power for each Aruba AP radio and keeps adjusting as interference and client load change, reducing manual RF planning and co-channel interference.

Interference caused when two or more radios in range transmit on the same channel. It raises the noise floor, lowers SNR, and cuts throughput, so planners separate same-channel cells and rely on power control.

Signal-to-noise ratio is the dB difference between a client's received signal from the serving AP and the background noise floor. Higher SNR allows denser modulation; voice designs often target 25 dB.

A number in 802.11n/ac/ax that maps modulation, coding rate, and spatial streams to a specific data rate. Higher indexes need better SNR, and rate adaptation chooses the index per client.

An AP behavior that makes dual-band clients prefer 5 GHz by suppressing or delaying 2.4 GHz probe responses, easing congestion on the older band without changing client configuration.

Aruba software that gathers client measurements from APs and steers or load-balances clients toward the best AP and band, addressing sticky clients and improving experience in high-density networks.

Dynamic Frequency Selection is a regulatory requirement for 5 GHz: radios must detect radar and vacate the channel, and check it is clear before transmitting, which can cause surprise channel changes.

An ArubaOS 8 management node that holds hierarchical, multi-controller configuration and orchestrates Mobility Controllers. It can be a hardware appliance or virtual machine and replaces the classic master controller role.

In classic ArubaOS master-local designs, the controller that stores global configuration, licenses, and the AP database, and pushes settings down to local controllers. ArubaOS 8 moves these duties to the Mobility Master.

A controller that terminates AP tunnels and serves clients at a site, receiving configuration from the master. It enforces roles and policies and forwards or bridges user traffic locally.

A named set of access points that share the same virtual APs and radio profiles. Provisioning an AP into a group makes it inherit that group's SSIDs, ARM settings, and regulatory configuration.

A controller object that combines an SSID profile, AAA profile, and VLAN or role assignment for a radio, allowing one physical AP to broadcast several distinct networks with separate security.

A profile containing the wireless network name and its layer-2 security settings, such as WPA2-PSK with a passphrase or WPA2-Enterprise, referenced by one or more virtual APs.

The controller's database of approved AP MAC addresses with their assigned group and IP. APs absent from the list are rejected at join, forming a basic admission control layer.

An ArubaOS feature that issues certificates to APs and controllers so APs authenticate to their controller and the control channel is encrypted, blocking spoofed or unauthorized APs.

A controller profile that selects the authentication methods for a virtual AP, names the RADIUS server group for authentication and accounting, and defines the default role and derivation rules.

A named policy set applied to a client after authentication, specifying VLAN, firewall sessions, bandwidth contracts, and other permissions. Roles are the foundation of Aruba's role-based access control.

Rules inside an AAA profile that assign a role based on conditions such as SSID, authentication type, RADIUS attributes, or device type rather than giving every client the same role.

An IEEE standard for port-based network access control in which a client proves its identity to a RADIUS server through the controller, typically with EAP-TLS or PEAP, before any traffic is allowed.

Aruba's policy and access management platform. It acts as a RADIUS and TACACS+ server, evaluates users and devices against policies, and returns role, VLAN, and firewall attributes to controllers.

A web authentication method where the controller intercepts a client's HTTP request, shows a login page, validates credentials locally or via RADIUS, and then places the client in the appropriate role.

A stateful firewall policy attached to a user role. It permits, denies, redirects, or logs traffic by source, destination, service, or application, and is enforced in the controller datapath.

An ArubaOS license that turns APs into wireless intrusion sensors, providing rogue detection and containment, intrusion signatures, and spectrum analysis for security and RF troubleshooting.

The process of labeling an unmanaged AP detected over the air as rogue, suspected rogue, neighbor, or known interfering, based on wired-network correlation and administrator rules, which decides whether containment is allowed.

Client movement between APs that stay in the same subnet, so the controller just updates the client's association and keeps its IP address, role, and existing sessions intact.

Mobility across controllers or subnets where the client keeps its original IP address; traffic is tunneled between the controller now serving the client and the controller anchoring its home subnet.

The controller that anchors a roaming client's original subnet and forwards its traffic, while the foreign controller serves the client at its new location and tunnels traffic to the home agent.

A group of up to twelve ArubaOS 8 controllers that share AP and client state, giving hitless AP failover, simplified L3 mobility, and one leader elected for control-plane coordination.

The reconnection of an AP to a backup controller after losing its primary, using its configured backup list or cluster membership; client sessions survive only if stateful failover applies.

Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol lets two controllers share a virtual IP address so a standby can take over gateway or management duties quickly if the active controller fails.

A second controller kept synchronized with the master's configuration and licenses so it can take over master duties after a failure, in either active-standby or dual-master mode.

Aruba's on-premises management platform that polls controllers and APs to deliver monitoring, historical reports, configuration auditing, firmware compliance, and alerts across many sites.

Advanced Monitoring is a lightweight ArubaOS feed that pushes statistics and events to management stations such as AirWave or Aruba Central, avoiding heavy SNMP polling.

The controller's forwarding plane, which processes packets, maintains firewall sessions, and bridges or routes user traffic. Administrators inspect it with commands like show datapath session.

A controller CLI command that lists every known AP with IP address, group, status flags, and controller association; usually the first check when an AP will not come up.

A bundled archive of logs, configurations, and command output from a controller or AP, generated for escalation and deep troubleshooting when individual checks are inconclusive.

Remote delivery of controller and AP event messages to configured servers at chosen severity levels, used for auditing, alerting, and correlating failures across the network.

A controller or AP function that records selected traffic to a file or mirrors it to an analyzer, letting engineers inspect authentication, DHCP, and roaming exchanges in Wireshark.