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Performing Advanced Configuration
System
You can configure and view the following parameters within the System Configuration screen:
• Name: The name assigned to the AP. System name must be between 1-31 characters. Refer to the Dynamic DNS
Support and Access Point System Naming Convention sections for rules on naming the AP.
• Location: The location where the AP is installed. Location must be between 1-255 characters.
• Contact Name: The name of the person responsible for the AP. Name must be between 1-255 characters.
• Contact Email: The email address of the person responsible for the AP. Email must be between 1-255 characters.
• Contact Phone: The telephone number of the person responsible for the AP. Phone must be between 1-255
characters.
• Object ID: This is a read-only field that displays the Access Point’s MIB definition; this information is useful if you
are managing the AP using SNMP.
• Ethernet MAC Address: This is a read-only field that displays the unique MAC (Media Access Control) address
for the Access Point’s Ethernet interface. The MAC address is assigned at the factory.
• Descriptor: This is a read-only field that reports the Access Point’s name, serial number, current image software
version, and current bootloader software version.
• Up Time: This is a read-only field that displays how long the Access Point has been running since its last reboot.
Dynamic DNS Support
DNS is a distributed database mapping the user readable names and IP addresses (and more) of every registered
system on the Internet. Dynamic DNS is a lightweight mechanism which allows for modification of the DNS data of
host systems whose IP addresses change dynamically. Dynamic DNS is usually used in conjunction with DHCP for
assigning meaningful names to host systems whose IP addresses change dynamically.
Access Points provide DDNS support by adding the host name (option 12) in DHCP Client messages, which is used
by the DHCP server to dynamically update the DNS server.
Access Point System Naming Convention
The Access Point's system name is used as its host name. In order to prevent Access Points with default
configurations from registering similar host names in DNS, the default system name of the Access Point is uniquely
generated. Access Points generate unique system names by appending the last 3 bytes of the Access Point's MAC
address to the default system name.
The system name must be compliant with the encoding rules for host name as per DNS RFC 1123. The DNS host
name encoding rules are:
• Characters have to be alphanumeric or hyphen.
• The name cannot start or end with a hyphen.
• The name cannot start with a digit.
• The number of characters has to be 63 or less. (Currently the system name length is limited to 32 bytes).
Image upgrades could cause the system to boot with an older system name format that is not DNS compliant. To
prevent problems with dynamic DNS after an image upgrade, the system name will automatically be converted to a
DNS compliant system name.
The rules of conversion of older system names are:
• If the length is greater than 63 then the string is truncated. (This will not happen since the system name is anyway
limited to 31 bytes)
• All invalid characters at the beginning or end of the string are replaced with the character 'X'.
• All other invalid characters are replaced with hyphens.