Will a network continue to operate local traffic offline?

[mhpcc]

We have an existing network with an appliance and few switches that are already configured and working great. We are having an event where we need to move the network to a location that doesn't have internet access. The same clients will be connected via Ethernet and those devices will only need local traffic between all the switches. If everything is pre-configured and then moved to this event, will all those devices still be able to talk locally?

[Inderdeep]

@mhpcc Meraki devices are managed and configured online through Dashboard and if there is no internet access which devices need to connect to Dashboard as control plane and management plane traffic they will not work. Meraki products are not meant to be used or configured offline. 

[mhpcc]

Thanks, so you're saying in our current environment, if we lost internet access, our clients would not be able to talk to each other?

[Inderdeep]

Via Meraki Dashboard you are managing devices and controlling policies but your data plane traffic is not going to the cloud it’s directly going from source to destination. So the answer to your question is “you still talk to remote destination but you can’t configure advance configuration and policies.

[mhpcc]

In this particular case, during that small timeframe, we wouldn't need to make any changes or see anything in dashboard. This event is basically several laptops talking to networked projectors, no internet connection necessary. Everything would come back online after the event. But your theory is that the local traffic still won't pass if the switch can't talk to the dashboard?

[Inderdeep]

When you say local traffic, you mean a source device traffic flowing to destination device... right it will flow as this is data plane traffic but make sure you configured all devices with the right configuration from Dashboard in advance so that you need not to do changes after losing internet connection

[mhpcc]

That's correct, so basically this network typically runs the A/V equipment for a room. We're literally taking all the same equipment outside and plugging them all into the same ports for just a couple of hours. So to answer your question, source devices would be on 10.10.30.xxx and their destinations would be 10.10.30.xxx. I'm just determining if I need to go temporarily get a dumb switch or if the existing Meraki switch would still allow them to communicate.

[Inderdeep · Accepted solution]

Yes they will communicate but you cant configure further configuration as Dashboard is not available to configure 

[mhpcc]

Ok thank you for your feedback. Yeah, we wouldn't need to do any reconfiguring. Thanks for your help.