Meraki Equipment and Dashboard Connectivity

[craddockc]

Dear Community,

I am new to Meraki and had some questions about how the gear connects to the cloud and how it gets its configs. 

1) How exactly do the Meraki switches and AP's contact the cloud? Are they pre-programmed at the factory to reach out to a certain URL once they have DNS and internet access? If so, what URL do they use? What ports do they use? Im assuming 443 for TLS connectivity?

2) When config changes are made in the portal, does the equipment "pull" the configs down or are they "pushed"? I ask for firewall reasons. If the configs are "pulled" from the gear then I dont need to allow inbound traffic from the Meraki Cloud into my network. 

Any answers or links to technical documentation would be very helpful! Thanks.

[HodyCrouch · Accepted solution]

You should start by logging in to Meraki Dashboard and looking at Help > Firewall Info.  That page will show you the required firewall rules to allow Meraki equipment to communicate with the dashboard.

With brand new (or factory reset gear), it's generally a good idea to connect them somewhere with DHCP and Internet access to allow the initial configuration to be downloaded.  After that, you can do whatever you want.

[NolanHerring]

Here are some links to get you going:

https://documentation.meraki.com/Architectures_and_Best_Practices/Cisco_Meraki_Best_Practice_Design/...

https://documentation.meraki.com/zGeneral_Administration/Other_Topics/Firewall_Rules_for_Cloud_Conne...

https://documentation.meraki.com/zGeneral_Administration/Cross-Platform_Content/Behavior_during_Conn...

[craddockc]

thank you for your very helpful replies!