SSID Availability and AP Tag issue

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Travis_Ferris
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SSID Availability and AP Tag issue

We have a situation where we have 4 AP's at a site and need to have different AP's broadcast different SSID's.  We use Meraki SSID Availability feature and have tags on all 4 AP's (3x AP's have employee SSID, and 1 AP broadcasts a different SSID for the maintenance area).

 

 

About 6 months ago, we had no connectivity in the maintenance area, and I found SSID Availability page showed the tag, but also showed 0 AP's matched that tag.  Removing/Re-adding the tag fixed the issue.

 

Yesterday, prior to upgrading firmware (27.7.1 to 28.6.1), I found the 3x AP's for the office space were not broadcasting.  I checked SSID Availability and again it didn't match the tag.  SSID Availability was looking for "office", while the AP tag was set to "Office":

 

Meraki SSID Avail - Copy.png

 

 

The problem is the AP Tag has always had a capitol letter in it, and wifi has worked before.  Has anyone had any issues with the SSID Availability tag reverting to lower case and and no longer matching AP tags?

 

Is there any best practices around AP tagging that recommends using all lower case?

 

My concern here is we are planning to roll out this solution to 2K+ locations and I don't want to cause a massive support issue.

1 Accepted Solution
NolanHerring
Kind of a big deal

And actually now that I look at it further, I think its a dashboard cosmetic issue.

 

If I check the SSID, the value that was all uppercase and is now all lowercase is there, and it is telling me that 'No APs matched'.  If I change it to all uppercase like my tag/SSID are configure for, it will show the correct number of access points that match.

 

However, since its telling me that none match, but its still 'working', it leads me to believe its cosmetic. I never bothered going back to fix it because I might be wasting my time if Meraki breaks it again.

Nolan Herring | nolanwifi.com
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3 Replies 3
NolanHerring
Kind of a big deal

I have noticed the same issue, where the tag (previously all CAPS by me) was converted to all lowercase. I thought it would be an issue, but its never caused the SSID's to stop broadcasting.

 

In fact, if I hover over an SSID that isn't enabled on the AP, it indicates that the SSID will only broadcast if the tag is enabled, and the tag name it shows is in all lowercase.

 

It does not seem to matter if its all lowercase or all uppercase. I think in your situation, its possible and unfortunate, that you have a mixture of uppercase and lowercase in the word itself that might be causing your issue.

 

I have not run into any problems with all my uppercase tags getting converted to lowercase (thank the Lord). This would have be like the nightmare from before when Meraki accidentally deleted ALL floorplans on all Orgs by mistake.

Nolan Herring | nolanwifi.com
TwitterLinkedIn
NolanHerring
Kind of a big deal

And actually now that I look at it further, I think its a dashboard cosmetic issue.

 

If I check the SSID, the value that was all uppercase and is now all lowercase is there, and it is telling me that 'No APs matched'.  If I change it to all uppercase like my tag/SSID are configure for, it will show the correct number of access points that match.

 

However, since its telling me that none match, but its still 'working', it leads me to believe its cosmetic. I never bothered going back to fix it because I might be wasting my time if Meraki breaks it again.

Nolan Herring | nolanwifi.com
TwitterLinkedIn
Travis_Ferris
Here to help

@NolanHerringI think you are right.  After investigating the Network-Wide -> Traffic Analytics, I'm seeing clients connected for the last 30 days.  So, even though the Wireless -> SSID Availability showed No AP's matching the tag, clients would not have been able to connect to the SSID if it wasn't broadcasting. 

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