Exam 350-101 Topic 2 Question 119 Discussion

The failure is occurring during WPA/WPA2 key management, not during mobility anchoring. The radioactive trace shows Failed to validate eapol mic. MIC mismatch followed by Failed to validate eapol key m2, which means the authenticator and supplicant derived different key material during the PSK handshake. Cisco's Catalyst 9800 client-connectivity troubleshooting maps this log pattern directly to a wrong password condition and lists the corrective actions as fixing the password on the endpoint or on the SSID/WLAN. The 11r MIC validation failed phrase does not automatically make 802.11r the root cause; it only shows that the failed MIC validation occurred while Fast Transition key logic was in use. Disabling 802.11r would be a workaround only for client capability or FT interoperability issues, but the trace points to PSK mismatch. Removing the anchor WLC would break the intended DMZ anchoring design, and matching WLANs on foreign and anchor is required for anchor deployments, but it would not produce this EAPOL M2 MIC failure. The correct remediation is to ensure the client-entered PSK matches the WLAN PSK.