Locating Hidden Meraki APs

[AbbyDoc-UK]

Hello Community,

I am working with a client's large property where 15-20 MR43 APs are installed, but I have no documentation or drawings indicating their installed hidden locations.

Can you please suggest some tools or methods that could help in discovering the approximate physical locations of the APs?

Regards,

Abby

[alemabrahao]

You can try Location Heatmap.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Monitoring_and_Reporting/Location_Analytics#Location_Heatmaps

[AbbyDoc-UK]

I did look at the heatmaps section, but nothing is displayed.

[rhbirkelund]

Create a dummy SSID and enable it on only one AP at a time, and then go hunting. 
Use Wireshark a capture packet, filtering only on the BSSID of the Dummy SSID. You should then be able to walk around and watch when a) packets are captured and b) when RSSI goes up or down.

[AbbyDoc-UK]

@rhbirkelund I would add that to my list of possible solutions, but I was looking for a solution that could at least get me within a few meters of the location to then hunt for the APs

[rhbirkelund]

If nothing else no is documented, you really have no other way to determine the location of Access Points.

You could use more professional tools such as Ekahau, to survey the area.

[PhilipDAth]

Once connected to the WiFi, open this web page:

http://my.meraki.com/

It reports in real time the AP you are connected to and the signal strength.

It may help to set the roaming aggressiveness in your WiFi NIC settings to the most extreme setting available.  This will make it aggressively roam to the closest AP.

Make sure you change the setting back when done.

[PhilipDAth]

ps. Make sure you look at the "Neighbors" tab when you do this to see the real-time signal strength.

[PhilipDAth]

Another idea I just had; outside of production time, turn the power level down to the lowest level.  This will make the coverage circle of each AP as small as possible, so that when you roam to it, you can draw a smaller circle for where it might be.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Radio_Settings/RF_Profiles#Transmit_Power_Range