Describe the problem. Vloka finds the solution.
A Catalyst 9800 will tell you everything, once you know which of forty screens to open and what the answer means. Vloka puts your wireless on the floor plan, watches it, and turns "the wifi is bad in the east wing" into the access point, the client and the minute it started.
What Vloka is
Vloka is software with built-in intelligence that supports the wireless administrator in managing wireless data networks. It extends the Cisco Catalyst 9800 wireless controller and supports the access points in the Cisco Catalyst 9100 series.
What that comes down to: Vloka puts your access points on your own floor plan and turns a complaint into the access point, the client and the minute. It reads the controller, and it reads the access point directly too — where a client is switched or authenticated at the access point, that is where the answer is. It explains a log line from a grounded library, keeps the history of what moved and when, watches every registered controller rather than only the one on screen, and works out what moving an access point or adding one would do to the coverage before you touch anything. The questions can be asked in plain words — see Vloka & KIDJO.
Where the 9800 stops, Vloka carries on
- Your building. The controller knows access points; Vloka knows which floor they hang on, and draws the client and its walk on it.
- The complaint. "It was slow in the meeting room" leads to the access point, the client and the minute — on the controller that is a question you must already know how to ask.
- Yesterday. The controller shows now; Vloka remembers what moved, when it moved, and which way the numbers went.
- All your controllers. A 9800 knows itself; Vloka watches every one you registered, so an access point that joined another controller is a move.
- What a log line means. On the controller it is a code; Vloka explains it from a grounded library.
- Before you do it. Move an access point, add one, turn one down — Vloka works out what that does to the coverage of your own building first.
- Diagnostics that clean up after themselves. Vloka switches debugging and capture points on, reads them, switches them off and checks that they are off.
Want to try it? The free version runs on a VM of your own: Download.
Built around the complaint
Nobody reports "the RSSI on AP-3F-12 dropped below −72". They say it was slow in the meeting room this morning. Vloka starts there.
The floor plan is the screen
Your own drawings, with the access points where they physically are. Distance rings from a measured model, roaming paths, and a client's walk through the building drawn on the plan rather than described in a table.
It looks, so you do not have to
Vloka switches its own diagnostics on and off — capture points, debug wireless mac, platform conditions — runs them, reads the result and cleans up after itself.
Log lines that say what they mean
Explanations come from a grounded library and the appliance's own diagnostics, not from a language model guessing at a mnemonic. A message Vloka does not know is recorded as unknown — locally, with no telemetry — instead of being explained anyway.
Everything stays in view
Whatever your licence says, Vloka keeps showing every access point — over the limit and after the expiry date. A monitoring screen that quietly shows 4 of 37 is the failure this product exists to avoid.
Read, and write with permission
Vloka is not read-only, and it does not pretend to be. It changes diagnostics itself. What it never touches without asking is configuration that carries traffic or outlives the session — WLANs, policies, interfaces, tags. Every such run is audited.
On your own kit, on your own Ubuntu
Installs onto an Ubuntu Server you already run — we ship Vloka, not an operating system. It reaches your controllers and nothing else: the licence check is the only thing that leaves your network, and it works offline indefinitely if it cannot.