The controllers communicate amongst themselves using a secure protocol. Among other things, this protocol is used to share between controllers the data required for high availability. They also use this protocol to communicate with NMS Wireless Manager. The protocol requires the use of a shared secret for mutual authentication of the end points.
By default the controllers and NMS Wireless Manager use a well known factory default shared secret. This makes it easy to get up and running but is not as secure as some sites require.
The controllers and NMS Wireless Manager allow the administrator to change the shared secret used by the secure protocol. In fact the controllers and Wireless Manager can use a different shared secret for each individual end point to which they connect with the protocol.
To configure the shared secret for a connection on the controller:
Note
Configure the same shared secret onto the devices at each end of the connection. Otherwise, the two controllers or controller and NMS Wireless Manager will not be able to communicate.