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Can't connect wireless interfaces #2067

Closed wxnarwhal closed 6 years ago

wxnarwhal commented 6 years ago

I love NetBox. The topology maps are working well for me and I really appreciate the hard work on this project. One thing I noticed is that I can't connect wireless interfaces, and I would love it if my office laptops could also show up in topology. I am using a Dell SonicWALL with 5 ports (X1-X4) and I have also added one wireless interface to NetBox (W0). If I try to connect from the wireless interface of a laptop I can't see W0. If I try to connect from W0 on the SonicWALL, the connection page defaults to X3. The dropdown contains X0-X4 but no W0.

It also occurs to me that if this is not already a feature of NetBox, another factor to consider is that the wireless access point would have to accept a one-to-many connections. Unlike the network ports, it would not be super helpful if I could only connect one laptop to the wireless interface.

Right now I'm calling this a bug report but it might be a feature request.

Issue type

[ ] Feature request [X ] Bug report [ ] Documentation

Environment

pm17788 commented 6 years ago

Curious. I've just added "wi0", and for 2 form factors I've tried ( 802.11a and 802.11b/g), the connect icon was available in the WebUI.

Out of curiosity, on the laptop and on the SonicWALL, what are the the form factors of the respective interfaces?

wxnarwhal commented 6 years ago

Thanks for your assistance. You've asked a good questions and I'm sorry I left it out of the ticket. I am using "IEEE802.11ac". Based on your troubleshooting I switched it to "IEEE802.11a" and "IEEE802.11b/g" and the problem persisted.

I then deleted W0 and added it back as "IEEE802.11ac" and have the same problem. I then switched it to 1000BASE-T (1GE) and I can connect it now. I then decided to try a bunch of options to list a few more here. Here's the complete list including the one's I've already listed.

1000BASE-T (1GE) - can connect successfully 10GBASE-T (10GE) - can connect successfully SFP+ (10GE) - can connect successfully IEEE802.11a - interface disappears from the Connect Interfaces list IEEE802.11b/g - interface disappears from the Connect Interfaces list IEEE802.11n - interface disappears from the Connect Interfaces list IEEE802.11ac - interface disappears from the Connect Interfaces list

pm17788 commented 6 years ago

Hrmm... What an odd thing. (To be clear: I'm just a NetBox user, not a dev or affiliated with them).

It almost feels like the data defining which interface "form factor"(s) are connectable isn't quite correct. Not sure where to look for that without spelunking through code for a bit. My Python-fu is still weak (still learning things), but I'll give it a stab in the next couple of days, perhaps I'll find something.

wxnarwhal commented 6 years ago

No worries, I appreciate your assistance. I noticed that v2.3.3 was released a couple of weeks ago but I'm still on v2.3.2. It might not be worth troubleshooting until I upgrade.

jeremystretch commented 6 years ago

Interface connections are necessarily limited to one-to-one relationships. Modeling wireless "connections" was never a goal given their typically one-to-many and dynamic nature.

flycam commented 6 years ago

I do have a very valid use case for modeling 1:1 connections with wireless: Wireless point to point links. As i have a few of those in the network, I am unable to document the connection accurately. I would really like to have those links connected in netbox while still having it shown as a wireless interface. So for 1:1 it would be very helpful to have the option of connecting those interfaces.

mweinelt commented 6 years ago

We do wireless backhaul as well and therefore have the requirement to connect PTP links, but wireless interfaces currently cannot be connected among each other.