AirGroup

AirGroup is a unique service that uses zero-configuration networking and allows devices to communicate over complex access-network topologies. AirGroup supports Bonjour and DLNA Digital Living Network Alliance. DLNA is a set of interoperability guidelines for sharing digital media among multimedia devices. services on Apple and Android devices respectively. Apple devices constantly send mDNS Multicast Domain Name System. mDNS provides the ability to perform DNS-like operations on the local link in the absence of any conventional unicast DNS server. The mDNS protocol uses IP multicast User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets, and is implemented by the Apple Bonjour and Linux NSS-mDNS services. mDNS works in conjunction with DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD), a companion zero-configuration technique specified. See RFC 6763. packets to locate Bonjour services. Similarly, Android devices constantly send SSDP packets to locate DLNA services.

In simple networks like a home network, discovering devices and services is easier because there is just one subnet Subnet is the logical division of an IP network.. If a network includes many client devices sending mDNS or SSDP queries, it consumes more bandwidth, affecting network performance. In large universities and enterprise networks, it is common for devices to connect to the network across VLANs Virtual Local Area Network. In computer networking, a single Layer 2 network may be partitioned to create multiple distinct broadcast domains, which are mutually isolated so that packets can only pass between them through one or more routers; such a domain is referred to as a Virtual Local Area Network, Virtual LAN, or VLAN.. As a result, client devices on a specific VLAN cannot discover a service that resides on another VLAN. The IP addresses in such networks are link-local scope multicast addresses. Each query or advertisement can only be forwarded on its respective VLAN, but not across different VLANs. Broadcast and multicast traffic are filtered out from a WLAN Wireless Local Area Network. WLAN is a 802.11 standards-based LAN that the users access through a wireless connection. network to preserve the airtime and battery life. This filtering inhibits the performance of services that rely on multicast traffic. HPE Aruba Networking addresses this challenge with AirGroup.

AirGroup allows administrators to set policy-based discovery and enables client devices to be location aware.

Zero-configuration networking enables the following functionality for desktop computers, mobile devices, and network services:

Service discovery
Address assignment
Name resolution

AirGroup also supports the following functionality:

DLNA—a network standard derived from UPnP Universal Plug and Play. UPnp is a set of networking protocols that permits networked devices, such as personal computers, printers, Internet gateways, Wi-Fi APs, and mobile devices to seamlessly discover each other's presence on the network and establish functional network services for data sharing, communications, and entertainment. for Android devices. AirGroup adds mDNS or SSDP proxy capabilities to campus WLANs, so that Bonjour or DLNA messages can be served across subnets or VLANs. DLNA uses SSDP for discovering services available on the network. DLNA enables the sharing of digital media between multimedia devices running Android or Windows operating systems. SSDP, multicasts, and advertises the services and queries managed by AirGroup without affecting the advertisement or discovery process of SSDP devices.
Wired servers in underlay deployment with APs running AOS-10—The wired servers connected in the network send multicast mDNS or SSDP traffic that reaches all the APs in the broadcast domain of the server (the same L2 broadcast domain, uplink of APs must be part of the VLAN). When an AP receives the mDNS or SSDP advertisement packets from a wired server for the first time, it sends meta-data update to the AirGroup service for leader election through a web socket. A leader is elected among the APs in the broadcast domain for the wired servers. The leader AP then builds the wired server cache and updates the cache to the AirGroup service on HPE Aruba Networking Central. Based on the network visibility or configured list of APs, the AirGroup service on HPE Aruba Networking Central distributes the wired server cache to the other APs.
To support wired servers in underlay deployment, configure the list of APs over which the wired server is visible. The wired server can be discovered only by the clients connected to these APs. For additional information, see AirGroup Configuration.
Follow-the-User—AirGroup The application that allows the end users to register their personal mobile devices on a local network and define a group of friends or associates who are allowed to share them. AirGroup is primarily designed for colleges and other institutions. AirGroup uses zero configuration networking to allow Apple mobile devices, such as the AirPrint wireless printer service and the AirPlay mirroring service, to communicate over a complex access network topology. allows wireless servers to be visible to wireless clients within the one-hop neighborhood of an AP. When Personal AirGroup is enabled, this feature is enabled as well, for personal servers that publish AirPrint services only. This allows the device owner to access their personal printers from any location beyond the one-hop neighborhood, within the network.
The Follow-the-user feature is applicable only for APs that run AOS-10.6 or above.

AirGroup Changes

AirGroup introduces the following changes from the previous releases:

AirGroup can be enabled and configured at global and group levels. Groups inherit the configuration from the global level but any configuration at a specific group level will override the configuration inherited from the global level.
AirGroup can be configured at per-group level.
HPE Aruba Networking Central licensing is applicable to AirGroup.
Monitoring is available at group level.
Visibility is available at site level and label level.
AirGroup supports disallow role configuration.

AirGroup Licensing

HPE Aruba Networking Central licensing is applicable to AirGroup services. The following table lists the availability of AirGroup services based on the type of license.

Table 1: HPE Aruba Networking Central Licensing for AirGroup
Function	Foundation License	Advanced License
Availability of AirPlay service	Yes	Yes
Availability of AirPrint service	Yes	Yes
Availability of DIAL service	Yes	Yes
Availability of Google Cast service	Yes	Yes
Availability of DLNA Media service	Yes	Yes
Availability of DLNA Print service	Yes	Yes
Availability of Amazon FireTV service	Yes	Yes
Monitoring visibility	Yes	Yes
Troubleshooting assistance	Yes	Yes
Services are available in deployments with bridge mode and in tunnel mode.	Yes	Yes
Learn or discover and build cache for a custom service.	Yes	Yes
Push custom service Central cache to APs.	Yes	Yes

AirGroup Features

AirGroup provides the following features:

Send unicast responses to mDNS queries and reduces mDNS traffic footprint.
Ensure cross-VLAN visibility and availability of AirGroup devices and services.
Allow or block AirGroup services based on user roles or VLANs.

For more information on the AirGroup solution, see Aruba Instant User Guide.

AirGroup Services

AirGroup supports discovery and management of the following services:

AirPlay—The AirPlay service allows wireless streaming of music, video, and slide shows from iOS devices to Apple TV and other devices that support the AirPlay feature.
AirPrint—The AirPrint service allows you to print from an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch directly to any AirPrint-compatible printer.
Amazon TV—The Amazon TV service allows you to stream music, video, and games to a television.
DIAL—The Discovery and Launch (DIAL) service allows streaming clients to search available devices in a wireless network. After discovering a device, DIAL synchronizes the information between the streaming client and the device and allows the streaming client to stream content to the device.
DLNA Media—Applications like Windows Media Player use this service to browse and play content on a remote device.
DLNA Print—The DLAN Print service, used by printers that support DLNA.
Google Cast—The Google Cast service allows you to play audio or video content on a high-definition television by streaming content through Wi-Fi Wi-Fi is a technology that allows electronic devices to connect to a WLAN network, mainly using the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radio bands. Wi-Fi can apply to products that use any 802.11 standard. from the Internet or local network.
Google Cast does not respond to application ID-based wildcard queries from HPE Aruba Networking Central.
Custom Service—User-defined AirGroup services. Both SSDP and mDNS type custom services are supported.
HPE Aruba Networking Central pushes the custom service configuration to all APs that runs AOS-10 irrespective of the license type applied on the APs. The discovered cache for a custom service is learned on all APs running AOS-10 and sent to HPE Aruba Networking Central. HPE Aruba Networking Central pushes central cache to only the APs with Advanced license.

AirGroup Limitations

AirGroup has the following limitations:

Template groups are not supported.
It is recommended to disable AirGroup when Personal Area Network (PAN) is enabled.
Wired overlay deployment is not supported as AirGroup is not supported on gateways. In a deployment scenario where a wired AirGroup server MDNS/SSDP multicast traffic reaches a gateway via an overlay VLAN, the overlay traffic floods the APs instead, which can impact their functionality. As a workaround, the wired server VLANs can be segregated from the gateway network.

See the following sections for information about configuring and monitoring AirGroup:

Monitoring AirGroup is applicable only for HPE Aruba Networking APs that run AOS-10, and is not supported for IAPs (standalone APs) running AOS-8 managed in HPE Aruba Networking Central.