Selectively powering on and off a bunch of APs

RumorConsumer
Head in the Cloud

Selectively powering on and off a bunch of APs

In a science lab, there can sometimes only be very low RF noise. That means having the ability to hit a switch and terminate all wireless network activity.

 

I have a building that is being built that needs this treatment. 

 

There will be fiber coming in which feeds a gigabit switch which will in turn feed a bunch of different rooms. Some of those Cat6a lines will go to computers and some will go to APs. My thought to be able to control the power on the APs easily is to connect all the AP cat6a to a second, subordinate switch and then put that switches power supply on an on/off light switch or something. That way I can take it offline at will without disrupting the rest of the network. Its old fashioned and it sounds like the easiest way to do this given that the building is down to the studs right now and I can wire however I want. Any other thoughts on how to this? A total non-admin luddite type has to be able to disable the wifi easily. 

 

thanks

Networking geek since high school where I got half of a CCNA. Played Marathon II and Infinity over localtalk.
Made many a network over the years, now de facto admin of a retreat center with some of this fine Meraki hardware.
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12 REPLIES 12
NolanHerring
Kind of a big deal

If you disable MESHING, and use the SSID Availability feature, you could in theory 'turn off' any wireless broadcasting from the AP's without having to actually power them down.

Another option I can think of is if you use power injectors for the AP's, instead of the switch, then you can purchase Amazon Smart Plugs and you can power them on/off whenever you want (as long as the Amazon plug has Internet over wifi), so maybe that wont work lol.

Can you enable/disable PoE on the switch with ease? That might be simpler.

Basically I would look for any solution that would allow you to do it from the comfort of a computer on the Internet, to give or take-away power to the AP's on a 1 by 1 basis.
Nolan Herring | nolanwifi.com
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If using a Meraki switch to power the APs via PoE, you could simply use the API to shut down the ports the APs are connected to.

@NolanHerring 

 

I think you missed his key point, " A total non-admin luddite type has to be able to disable the wifi easily."

 

Based on this, I think the best bet would be to wire up some method of POE injectors to a light switch that they just turn off the switch when they want the WiFi off.

 

This saves the option of having people messing with your switches and two offers a very simple solution of controlling the APs, if there is no power then no WiFi.

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Bah! I did miss the point lol
Nolan Herring | nolanwifi.com
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All good thanks fellas, @vassallon that’s more or less my thinking. Maybe injectors would be more practical. 

Networking geek since high school where I got half of a CCNA. Played Marathon II and Infinity over localtalk.
Made many a network over the years, now de facto admin of a retreat center with some of this fine Meraki hardware.
Fortune 100 Tech veteran/refugee.

@RumorConsumer 

 

I would much rather have people turning off the POE injectors rather than rebooting a switch.

 

Also, this should shorten the time for wireless to be available again as you just have to wait for the APs to get POE and not a switch to spin back up. 

 

This to me feels like it would be an instant off solution and almost instant on solution.

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I like the idea off a manual on-off switch.  I'd go with your own suggestion.

 

Are you going to build RF shielding into the walls (to make it super quiet)?

I know what would be fun - build it into the earth, below ground.  It's hard to beat ordinary earth for RF shielding.

 

Plus if your science lab explodes you'll have some containment.  🙂

I'd go with a script that turns the PoE on the AP ports on and off. Either run it via a simple desktop shortcut or if you need it even simpeler you could hook up a button or a flip switch to a RPi and run the script on that! That would be pretty cool and cheap. You could even host a simple web page on the RPi to do it via a website instead.

You could possibly even tell Alexa to run that script for you 😉

@PhilipDAth  yes - this is a fully spec'd out faraday caged set of rooms to conduct high sensitivity brain scans. University level research. Pretty cool huh.

Networking geek since high school where I got half of a CCNA. Played Marathon II and Infinity over localtalk.
Made many a network over the years, now de facto admin of a retreat center with some of this fine Meraki hardware.
Fortune 100 Tech veteran/refugee.

>Pretty cool huh.

 

Very cool!

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