Timespan portion of Network client APIs seems to be off

[cpeers]

I am trying to get a days worth of network history for each client. The Meraki API v1 documentation says that the timespan should be in seconds. However, if I set the timespan for 86400 seconds, I only get 8 hours worth of usage history. I tried tripling that number, but that gave me way more than a day's worth of history.

Am I using the timespan portion of this function correctly? What number should I be using to get a day's worth of content? The code I used to get the usage history is below.

client_usage[client_id] = dashboard.networks.getNetworkClientsUsageHistories(nwID, client_id, timespan='86400')

Using:

Mac OS 11.2.2

VS Code

Python 3.8.2

Meraki SDK 1.7.1

[Greenberet]

by default you are only getting one page as the result set.

You can try to download all pages in the timespan

client_usage[client_id] = dashboard.networks.getNetworkClientsUsageHistories(nwID, client_id, timespan='86400', total_pages='all')

[cpeers]

Thanks for the reply. Given the output I got when I tried different timespans, I had a feeling this was not the case.

After trying your suggestion, I can tell you that the results are either,

1. The same (when I tried ts='86400')

OR

2. Only slightly different (a difference of one 20 minute time interval when I tried a different ts)

I'm not sure what has changed, but when I previously ran the function at ts='86400' I received 8 hours of data, but when I tried this time I only received 2 hours and 20 minutes of non-continuous data over a period of a day. This is unrelated from your suggestion as I get the same data with or without total_pages.

Does anyone also know why I would suddenly get less and non-continuous data for the same client ID and same ts?

[klausengelmann]

Hello CPEERS

I have the same doubt you described in your post.

I am struggling to understand how to combine the "timespan" parameter with a "polling frequency".

I am collecting the number of clients associated per Meraki Access Point or Network using the following URL:

https://api.meraki.com/api/v0/networks/MY_NETWORK/clients?perPage=1000&timespan=3600

In order to avoid the API Rate Limit I am collecting the result every hour using PRTG.

The timespan used inside the URL is also 3600 seconds (1 hour).

The problem is that the data is coming in a very inconsistent way. 

Please, could you help me to understand how can I use the Meraki API timespan correctly ?

What is the recommended time interval to collect the connected clients ?

When I am using MERAKI APIs that do not have the "timespan" feature I can collect reliable data.

If I have to use the timespan in other APIs the data never comes like it is in reality.

Regards,

[pp]

Did you ever find an answer to this question? I'm looking to pull signal quality and channel utilization data and running into the same question, how do I use timespan correctly?

[pp]

... and I just figured out my issue. I wasn't specifying the resolution to give me the granularity I wanted. The default resolution is 86400 seconds. I needed to reduce it to 300.