Difficulty accessing the Local Status Page of AP via wired & wireless

[Vanessa]

Has anyone experienced difficulty in accessing the local status page of wireless APs (fresh from the box)?

We have experienced this issue many times already when we try to configure the static IP Address of the AP prior to installation. We do either connecting to its default SSID via wireless or connecting back to back to AP using wired connection, which may take sometimes from 30 minutes (indoor AP) to 1 hour (outdoor AP). We also do hardware reset during the process. The only workaround we do is deploy the AP using DHCP and change the IP addressing to static after it has connected successfully to Meraki Cloud. Is there a way wherein we can access this instantly?

[BlakeRichardson]

Hi Vanessa

Are you plugging the computer you are accessing the AP from directly into the AP rather than into your whole network. I find setting up new devices its best to keep it nice and simple.

1. Using a web browser on the client machine, access the AP’s built-in web server by browsing to http://my.meraki.com. Alternatively, browse to http://10.128.128.128.

Using the above have you correctly set your subnet? I suspect if you can configure the AP by plugging it into your network and obtaining an IP address via DHCP then something isn't quite right with the network settings on the computer you are using to connect to the device.

Can you post a screenshot of your ethernet settings.

Also Welcome to the forums!

[Vanessa]

Hi Blake,

The AP is plugged directly in the computer. Will try using http://10.128.128.128.

Thanks!

[PhilipDAth · Accepted solution]

My guess is - especially if this is a "fresh" AP - that it will be doing a firmware upgrade.  I suspect if you plug them all in the day before and leave them they will be ok at install time.

Next question - why use static IP addresses for AP's - that seems very old school?

[Adam]

We use statics on all of our APs as well so we can add them as Radius Clients to our NPS server.  Agreed that I could potentially just use its DNS name but I don't necessarily trust that for Radius reliability.  

And I agree with @PhilipDAth, the APs are probably just catching up to the same firmware as the network they are in on initial bootup so could take a few before they checkin and get their IP update. 

[PhilipDAth]

@Adam did you know that NPS allows you to specify a prefix instead of an IP address?  For example, instead of adding an AP with the IP address 192.168.1.12, you can add every AP with a single line like 192.168.0.0/16?  This is what I usually do for clients, then you can leave all the APs on DHCP.

[BlakeRichardson]

@PhilipDAth We use static addresses on our AP's so they can be loaded into our monitoring systems. TBH I haven't tried using a dynamic IP with our various pieces of monitoring software but doubt it would go well. 

[PhilipDAth]

Why would you use a third party monitoring system when you have excellent monitoring built into the dashboard?

That's like taking "Meraki Simple", and then complicating it.

[Vanessa]

Some of our customers still prefers to use static specially for small organisations but we're pushing them to use DHCP. Thanks for the input.