Issues with wireless card readers not phoning home

ElSysAdmin
New here

Issues with wireless card readers not phoning home

My company recently deployed some new card readers throughout the building. We hired a security company to install and manage them. The security guys came out for the install, and got them all setup and connected to WiFi. The devices seemed to connect just fine, and work properly. The company manages the setting remotely, so the install guys called and verified that the readers are showing as offline, and unable to get home. They claimed no incoming ports need to be opened, and only outgoing traffic needs to be allowed. I double checked that our Meraki FW is not blocking any outgoing traffic. To get around the issue we had to purchase a hotspot from a wireless provider, but it sure would be nice to have them working on my network as expected. A few weeks later we got a few of those room monitoring devices for our conference rooms and the same issue occurred with those... Any idea what could be interfering?

 

NOTE: APs, switches, and FW all Meraki brand. 

7 Replies 7
alemabrahao
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

What authentication type are you using? Wpa2 with Psk?

 

Can you share the SSID configuration?

I am not a Cisco Meraki employee. My suggestions are based on documentation of Meraki best practices and day-to-day experience.

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Blacked out the corp wifi, as it was not the one being used.

Screenshot 2023-02-10 142459.png

Is it possible change the Meraki DHCP for bridge mode?

I am not a Cisco Meraki employee. My suggestions are based on documentation of Meraki best practices and day-to-day experience.

Please, if this post was useful, leave your kudos and mark it as solved.

On more question, is the 802.11w enabled?

I am not a Cisco Meraki employee. My suggestions are based on documentation of Meraki best practices and day-to-day experience.

Please, if this post was useful, leave your kudos and mark it as solved.

+1 to check 802.11w.  Many IoT devices to not correctly implement this.  The other one I run into with IoT devices is not supporting 802.11r properly.

 

More than likely, if you keep dumbing down your Meraki network you'll get to the point where ti starts working - at the expense of all your clients that do support the "standard" protocols.

Another issue I've had is if you have WiFi6 MRs, and the IoT device can't handle seeing a WiFi6 beacon.  Disabling 802.1ax resolve this - you none of your machines with WiFi6 NICs will get a WiFi6 connection anymore.

 

I guess you can keep disabling feature till it works - and then decide if you can live with those features disabled.

cmr
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

As @alemabrahao said, it is probably the Meraki DHCP mode, this is usually only used for small deployments with 1-2 APs where the clients are simple devices like phones.  Otherwise you can hit issues.

 

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