problems with large scale usage of Meraki API?

[paulpharr]

Hi all -

We have been using the Meraki API for several years very effectively and it has been a big reason we have strategically decided to standardize on Meraki at the edge and for WiFi - so our scale of use is increasing significantly from dozens to many hundreds or ultimately thousands of devices.

We are running into friction because some of the API behaviors that work well at a small scale have surprising problems with more devices and data.

For example, it looks like some (or possibly many) API endpoints simply don't support pagination.

I just opened a support case and was told that pagination support is simply missing from alerts/history:

https://api.meraki.com/api/v1/networks/{NET_ID}/alerts/history

and in reading other forum posts it looks like there are questionable implementations where filter policy is applied per-page rather than across all results - making some valuable data very difficult to access through API

I am encouraged to see that the Meraki API is broadly used - and for many things, the value is high - but I want to find out if others have encountered the same types of scaling problems I describe with managing many hundreds of devices? And have your efforts to work with Meraki to get the problems solved been effective?

[Oren]

Happy new year!

Thank you for sharing your experience and raising these important points about scaling with the Meraki API. I appreciate the feedback.

Regarding getNetworkAlertsHistory, it does support pagination, although the implementation is a legacy one. While the expected "link" attribute is missing from the response headers (which can make navigation less intuitive), you can still paginate through results using the perPage, startingAfter, and endingBefore parameters.

This approach allows you to request the next or previous set of results, even though it may not follow the standard pattern seen in other endpoints. It's possible this is a legacy behavior and may improve in future updates.

1. "I just opened a support case and was told that pagination support is simply missing from alerts/history" - Can you share the case number please? I'd like to understand the reasons you were given this answer.
2. The getNetworkAlertsHistory operation is not widely used. What information are you trying to obtain from it?
3. You mentioned this is one example. Have you noticed challenges with any other operations?