I have just got the new Apple iMac Pro, and here it is I have taken some photos of it, and it simply looks beautiful. The model I got is the following:
– 3.0GHz 10-Core Intel Xeon W processor with Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz
– 64GB of 2666MHz DDR4 ECC memory
– 2TB SSD
– Radeon Pro Vega 64 with 16GB of HBM2 memory
– Magic Mouse 2 + Magic Trackpad 2 — Space Grey
– Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad — US English — Space Grey
– Accessory Kit
And you know what I like about it, is that its damn fast.. and lovely to work with.. and almost will bankrupt you 🙂 haha.. .
Also to go along with it I got the … Creative Sound Blaster X7 external soundcard which is a must if you love your audio 🙂
This baby has a 10Gigabit network card, thats right you heard it, a 10Gigabit NIC!! However Im still using my Cisco 2960X to plug into it at 1G.. now if only Cisco has to release a 2960X 10gig version 🙂
I recently have purchased 2 x Cisco 3802 , and 2 x Cisco 1852 Access points to work with the Cisco 2504 WLC Controller. I really wanted to upgrade to AC wifi and take advantage of all that Cisco have to offer in the wireless world and put it through some tests and performance. Initially i found it great on Windows Laptops and Macbooks, however i had major issues with Apple IOS 11 and Apple TV. Connections would constantly drop and would not work as well. I was testing on the 5Ghz/80Mhz band, and i seriously thought there was an issue with this band, as switching things to 2.4Ghz/20Mhz seemed to work better.
I raised a Cisco TAC case to further investigate these issues and we found that:
1) Optimized Roaming was enabled for 802.11a and 802.11b. (On WLC: Wireless > Advanced > Optimized Roaming)
This caused many issues with the Apple TV and Iphones/Ipads, and disabling this fixed the Apple TV, but not fully the Iphones and Ipads.
Optimized Roaming Settings on WLC, remove the ticks
2) Fast Transition was enabled with Adaptive (On WLC: WLANS > “Your SSID” ID > Security > Layer 2 > Fast Transition)
Having Fast Transition enabled caused the significant issues with Iphones and Ipads with wireless connectivity and dropping. Once this was switched off we immediately noticed the performance improvement and roaming.
Set FT to Disable on WLC
Cisco advised that the IOS 11 is buggy when it comes to the implementation of Fast Transition as we went through many debugs. They advised I needed a Apple Enterprise Support contract for Apple to just look at it, which I couldnt afford, so I have left Fast Transition “off”. The enterprise contract is like $5995 USD, or $799 USD per incident, just a bit pricy!
I also asked if there was any benefits to Fast Transition being “on”, and they advised it was only beneficial if my wireless setup is 802.1X and this improves the roaming between AP’s and going through Radius etc. My scenario only had WPA2 Pre-Shared key, so i could leave the Fast Transition set to Off without any issues.
Cisco Apple best practice document found here, advises FT should be set to Adaptive and left on, however as we found IOS 11 has severe issues with their implementation of FT..
I queried Cisco whats going on here.. and why there is so many issues and differentiates from their document and their advise was:
FT will always be suggested on Apple enterprise environment. This can’t be removed from the document simply because new iOS on some devices are having buggy issues with it. This is something that need to be fixed on Apple side and Cisco has nothing to change on the code or document since we are following the IEEE standard that we expect Apple to also follow on their entire product line.
Unfortunately as shared before to engage Apple care , you need to have an “enterprise AppleCare support agreement” contract.
TAC can’t do anything from Cisco side for this case to move further unfortunately.
So for all of you reading and have Cisco Wireless setup, running IOS 11, and are noticing problems with Apple TV/Iphones/Ipads be warned what options are set on the WLC, and how it could affect the wireless experience.
For Apple reading, please look at your FT implementation with Cisco on IOS11, so its less buggy, especially on the 5Ghz bands.
Again, thanks for reading and any feedback welcome.
I started following this tv series called “Dark Matter” and season 3 just finished, I then learned the SyFy network wont continue Season 4. I am greatly disappointed they will not renew this series as it was great, it was a scifi futuristic style tv show set 600 years or so into the future, with good characters and android robots.
