Juniper Mist Integration FAQ and Troubleshooting

This document provides answers to commonly asked questions about the NetBox Juniper Mist integration.

General Questions

Q: Does the integration support multiple Mist organizations?
A: Yes, to ingest data for multiple organizations, you can run separate integration instances with different configurations.

Q: Can NetBox push configurations to Mist?
A: No. The integration is currently data-in only, synchronising from Mist into NetBox.

Q: Is the integration free to use?
A: The Mist integration is available with commercial editions of NetBox.

Q: Do I have to buy NetBox Assurance to use the NetBox Mist integration?
A: Yes. The NetBox Mist integration extracts and transforms the latest state from Juniper Mist which is sent to NetBox Assurance where users can control how it is ingested into NetBox.

Q: Which versions of NetBox are supported?
A: 4.2.3 and above.

Q: Which versions of the Mist API are supported?
A: This integration is built on the Juniper Mist Cloud API (v1)

Technical Questions

Q: What authentication methods does the integration support?
A: The integration supports API token authentication to Mist. You need to provide a valid Mist API token and organization ID.

Q: How does the integration handle API rate limits?
A: The integration uses the Mist API client which automatically handles rate limiting and pagination. The client includes built-in retry logic for rate-limited requests.

Q: What happens if a Mist device is unreachable?
A: The integration will process all devices from the inventory API regardless of connection status. Disconnected devices will be marked as "offline" status in NetBox.

Q: How are site assignments determined for devices?
A: Devices are assigned to sites based on their site_id field from the Mist inventory. Devices with invalid or missing site_id are assigned to an "Unassigned Mist Inventory" site.

Q: What happens to WLANs when their serving devices are offline?
A: WLANs are processed independently of device status. The integration creates WLAN entities based on site configurations, not just active devices.

Q: How does the integration handle duplicate WLANs?
A: The integration deduplicates WLANs based on unique combinations of (wlan_id, site_id, ssid). Each unique combination creates one NetBox WirelessLAN entity.

Q: What custom fields are required in NetBox?
A: The integration requires these custom fields:

• mist_id (Site, Text)
• mist_mac (Device, Text)
• mist_type (Device Type, Text)
• mist_wlan_id (Wireless LAN, Text)
• mist_ap_ids (Wireless LAN, JSON)
• mist_ap_scope (Wireless LAN, Selection)
• mist_wxtag_ids (Wireless LAN, JSON)
• mist_wlans_served (Device, JSON)
• mist_aps_serving_this (Wireless LAN, JSON)

Troubleshooting

Connection Issues

Problem: Connection to Mist API fails with authentication errors
Solution:

• Verify API token is valid and has appropriate permissions
• Check if the organization ID is correct
• Ensure the API token hasn't expired
• Verify Mist API service is accessible from your network

Problem: Authentication fails with "Invalid API token"
Solution:

• Verify the API token is correctly formatted
• Check if the token has the required scopes for the organization
• Ensure the token is not expired or revoked
• Verify the organization ID matches the token's access

Problem: API requests return 403 Forbidden
Solution:

• Check if the API token has sufficient permissions
• Verify the organization ID is correct
• Ensure the token has access to the specific organization
• Check if there are any IP restrictions on the API token

Common Error Messages

"❌ MIST_APITOKEN must be provided in policy config"

• Add MIST_APITOKEN to your policy configuration
• Verify the API token is valid and properly formatted

"❌ MIST_ORG_ID must be provided in policy config"

• Add MIST_ORG_ID to your policy configuration
• Verify the organization ID is correct