Different Network ID of MQTT message and API networks

[MilosJovanovic]

I'm an external developer for a client. Working on getting data from Meraki MR devices. I have a very basic understanding of Meraki dashboard and apis.

I successfully got data off of meraki api, and I'm triggering .../organizations/:organizationId/networks

to get available networks for the organization (having only one). I'm getting a network with ID L_.....

This is all good, but when I configured MQTT in Wireless->IoT Radio Settings, I'm receiving MQTT messages on topic

meraki/v1/mr/N_...../... and in the payload network id is N_......

As the app we're making needs the client to pick a network that we're going to listen MQTT messages for, how do I get that N_... network id via api? I'm only gettting L_...

If I call some other endpoints with networkId of N_... they still work and provide data, but I see no way to know the N_... network id before receiving some mqtt message.

Anything I'm missing? Do I need to somehow map the N_... network id to L_... network id in our part of software? If so - where in GUI can client procure this network id?

[sungod]

The N_/L_ prefix depends on the network type, see this page:

https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/build/deep-links/

But if I look at the source of a Dashboard page showing, say, an MR device in a combined network, then search for Mkiconf.locale_id and Mkiconf.ng_id, these are the L_ and N_ identifiers respectively, it appears both can exist for the same network, which looks like what you are experiencing....

Example (actual values altered):

Mkiconf.locale_id = "602919401234567890";
Mkiconf.ng_id = "602919400987654321";

Why both? I have no idea!

I don't recall seeing an API call to get both, but I'd guess you could use the deep link capability explained on the link above to grab the JSON from a Dashboard page on the target network and get them that way.

[PhilipDAth]

This API call will return a list of all networks and their IDs.

https://developer.cisco.com/meraki/api-v1/get-organization-networks/

[Ryan_Miles]

That call returns the L_ combined network locale ID, not the individual N_ network IDs.

[John_on_API]

Hi @MilosJovanovic taking off my employee hat and speaking as a civilian, this sounds a bit like unintended behavior. You might want to check with support on this -- imho, MQTT should use the same network ID that dashboard API uses.

You might report this as "MQTT API doesn't use the network ID in topics" and point them to this thread.

In the meantime, I think you'll need to use the device serial number, and poll getOrganizationDevices (you can filter on productTypes[]=wireless, if you only care about MR), to find out what the network ID of a given MR is.

Putting the employee hat back on, this is a limitation on the MQTT side, and not a flaw with dashboard API.

[MilosJovanovic]

Thanks Everyone for helping and attempting to resolve this.

None of the suggestions didn't allow me to get a proper network id.

@John_on_API get organization devices still gives L_... network for each device, regardless of any filtering by type, serial or other.
Get Network devices (/networks/:networkId/devices) gives network Id that I sent... If I call it with L_... I get L_..., if I call with N_... I get N_...

We didn't resolve the issue, and decided to go a different route.

We'll instruct clients to change the MQTT topic in the configuration to a fixed generated uuid from our side, so that we can map network responses like that.
Not the best solution, as it only allows for one network, but good enough for first version.