Context APIs (NBAPIs)
NB API is part of ALE solution that is being integrated with Mobility Master and the helper process aids the JVM process in the AOS Services controller.
This process receives the protobuf encoded ZMQ ALE feed consisting of Geofence, Location and Presence updates and makes them available to NBAPI JVM process as well as publishing the feed to AOS GSM.
CLI can be used to configure nbapi_helper process to receive ZMQ feed from ALE, LC are also sending AMON feed to SC on port 9001. The JVM process grabs the AMON feed coming in port 9001 and update the redis DB with all the context information.
The Analytics and Location Engine supports two types of APIs:
– a polling-based REST API, and
– a publish/subscribe API based on Google Protobuf and ZeroMQ.
NBAPI-helper process sends out a ZMQ feed. This feed contains context information like AP, VAP, Radio, RSSI, Visibility_rec, Destination, Application.
ZMQ feed or REST API does not contain location, geofence and presence info. These are only updated in the GSM.
If location, presence and geo-fence information is required, the customer will have to subscribe to ZMQ feed from individual ALEs.
NBAPI helper process running on Services Controller is a multi-threaded process handling following tasks :
- Listening to ZMQ Location, Presence and Geo-fence updates from ALE VM.
- Writing the above messages to GSM.
- Getting Controller information from GSM and updates of configuration file regulating the NBAPI java process.
- NBAPI-helper process sends out a ZMQ feed. This feed contains context information like AP, VAP, etc
- By default, ZMQ feed or REST API does not contain location, geofence and presence info. These are only updated in the GSM.
- If location, presence and geo-fence information is required, the customer will have to subscribe to ZMQ feed from individual ALEs.
Configuration:
ale-configuration
ale_sta_associated
anonymize
ip address 10.17.164.26 username admin password Aruba@p1
nbapi_publish
The following command is used to configure an ALE IP address with login
information.
(host) [mynode] (config) #ale-configuration
(host) [mynode] (config-submode) # ip <IP address> username <username>
password <password>
The following command is used to configure anonymization on the Mobility Master REST API:
(host) [mynode] (config) #ale-configuration
(host) [mynode] (config-submode) #anonymize
The following command is used to enable REST APIs on the Mobility Master
to publish data available via ZMQ, including station, virtual AP, AP, radio, RSSI, visibility record, destination. By default, this parameter is false.
(host) [mynode] (config) #ale-configuration
(host) [mynode] (config-submode) #nbapi_publish
References:
ARUBA EMEA AIRHEADS – The content of this blog is from my training presentation to the Aruba EMEA Partners.
WirelessBuff 