I found a need to create a portable WIFI solution that is easy to setup, easy to take down and only needs AC power and reliable cellular service. The use case is for temporary events, both indoors and outdoors, where WIFI is needed for devices like Point-Of-Sale registers, digital tickets, digital signage and general internet access. Some of the possible events are farmers markets, little league tournaments, food truck courts and golf tournaments.   I used some off-the-shelf television antenna tri-pod mounts and masts as the platform to mount the equipment on. They are cheap, light-weight, durable and easy to transport.   Base station   I needed a water proof enclosure to house the PoE switch. I used a Ventev climate controlled cabinet that I had from another project. The cabinet has an AC outlet built in along with a small fan to vent it. I removed the heating element from the cabinet as the switch will keep it warm. I used an APC surge protector to provide some power protection for the electronics. I used a small, cheap, unmanaged, 8 port 100 megabit PoE+ industrial grade network switch. The switch also has a single gigabit non-PoE port. I would have used an 8 port MS120 switch, but I was concerned about it's environmental specifications and size. The other Meraki devices provide plenty of visibility into the local network.   Inside the Base Station   I had an extra MT10 Temperature and Humidity Sensor that I put in the cabinet. The fan is drawing heat from the cabinet out of the top inlet. This means ambient air is being drawn in to the cabinet from the bottom inlet. So the MT10 is measuring the outside air temperature and humidity. So this system also functions as a rather expensive weather station too.   Base Station fan and air filters   I installed a small outlet box on the bottom of the cabinet and used a 6 port RJ45 plate for it. I wired one of the ports (blue jack) to the gigabit port and 5 more ports (white jacks) to the 100 megabit PoE ports. This is the only part of the project that is not weather-proof. The gigabit port could be connected to a local broadband internet circuit if it were available. I do not plan to the leave the system out in the weather for extended periods of time, so this was an acceptable solution.   Network ports I choose to go with the external network ports so that it would be easy to connect and disconnect network devices to the base station without having to open the cabinet. The network jacks and wire are all Category 6, although 5E would work too.   MG21E Cellular Gateway   I installed a Meraki MG21E Cellular Gateway on top of the base station to provide internet access. When the new Starlink satellite internet service is available, I could remove the MG21E and install the Starlink dish on top of the poll.   MR86 Wireless Access Point   I used a Meraki MR86 WIFI 6 Outdoor Wireless Access Point for the WIFI access. I realize the MR86 is overkill for this project and the MR76 would be a better choice, but the MR86 APs were in stock and the MR76 APs were not. An MR70 AP would also be an even cheaper option.   Ventev Wireless Patch Antenna   I went with the Ventev micro patch antenna to direct the wireless network coverage towards a specific area. All four leads are dual band and the antenna is much smaller and cheaper than a pair of the Meraki patch antennas. The patch antenna could also be replaced with an omni-directional dome antenna for a wider coverage area.   Secondary AP for additional coverage   I setup an additional station to provide better coverage for larger events. It draws power and internet from the base station. I used the same AP and antenna for it. I can theoretically run four of these from the base station, as long as they are within 300 feet or so. I could also power the additional stations with a PoE injector and rely on the Meraki Wireless Mesh access to.   I added some firewalls rules to the wireless SSID to block bandwidth consuming services like file-sharing, peer-to-peer and web advertisements. I used traffic shaping to limit the wireless users to two megabits of bandwidth. This should be sufficient for most users and allowances can be made if more bandwidth is needed.   You can grant access to the wireless network through multiple different methods. My favorite one to use is Facebook authentication. The wireless users have to "like" you business or organization page in order to use the wireless network.   I hope you enjoyed this project post!     ... View more

We recently completed the installation of a full suite of Meraki sensors and video surveillance of a medium sized data center. The data center has a single chilled water cooling system.   They had been using an old Sensaphone monitoring system to monitor the temperature and water leaks. The system was very unreliable and cumbersome to use.   We installed an MT10 sensor to monitor the temperature and humidity, an MT12 to monitor water leaks from the chilled water system and an MT20 to monitor the single door access into the data center.   We set alerts for both high and low temperatures and humidity levels, water leaks and if the door to the data center was left open for more than a few minutes. We originally installed the water leak sensor so that it was in contact with the concrete floor. Even though the floor was dry, the drain for the condensate from the cooling system was about 8 inches away from the sensor. Their must have been enough moisture in the floor that it was intermittently tripping the sensor. We raised the sensor just a fraction of an inch off the floor and the false alarms stopped. The sensor must be very sensitive to detect moisture on what looks like a dry floor.   We installed two MV32 360 degree cameras to monitor the open areas of the data center and installed an MV12W camera to monitor an area behind the main network equipment racks, which is where the chilled water system is installed. We used the telescoping pendant mounts for the two MV32 cameras and the wall mount for the MV12W. The cameras serve as the BLE gateway for the sensors. Each sensor was able to connect to all three cameras from anywhere in the room.    We connected the MT10 and MT12 sensors to the optional AC power supplies and also installed the batteries in all of the sensors, just to insure complete up time.   The customer went from having no visibility into the data center to being able to see everything in it, as well as remotely view the temperature and humidity, track the number of times the data center was accessed and know who it was and be alerted if there are any water leaks or cooling system failures.   MV32 #1 MV32 #2 MV12W MT20 Door Sensor MT10 Temperature and Humidity Sensor MT12 Water Leak Detection Sensor ... View more

It looks like many of the Meraki products are affected by the DNSpooq vulnerabilities, but the latest software versions have been patched to fix them.   https://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-dnsmasq-dns-2021-c5mrdf3g     ... View more

Here is a summary of a network replacement project that we just completed. This customer makes custom cabinets for homes here in Oklahoma. They have experienced exceptional growth during the pandemic as people travel less and invest more in their homes. They had an antiquated network infrastructure that consisted of a Dell SonicWall firewall, several un-managed Netgear switches, several EnGenius and Linksys APs and no power protection. They also had an ancient NEC key system with the LCD displays on most of the analog phones non-functional. They had most of their network equipment installed in a cabinet in the filthy manufacturing area, where they are running many saws and sanders. Needless to say, their is saw dust and cobwebs everywhere in this area. We installed a new APC 13U cabinet for the MDF in the air-conditioned office area of the company and installed all new Category 6 cabling, patch panels, wall plates and jumpers. We installed an MX67 firewall and MS120-48FP switch in the MDF. Their is an APC SMT1000RM2U UPS with Smart Connect cloud monitoring to power protect the network equipment in the cabinet from Oklahoma's sometimes violent thunderstorms. We installed a new APC 6U wall mount cabinet for the IDF. We installed an MS120-24P switch and an APC Short Depth 500 VA Lithium Ion UPS with Smart Connect in the IDF cabinet. There are 2 one gigabit cables in an LACP Trunk between the MDF and the IDF switches. We installed 4 MR36 APs in the office and warehouse areas to provide WIFI6 coverage throughout the entire facility. We installed a new Cisco WebEx Calling system with 8800 series phones and ported the phone numbers over to it. We connected a Cisco ATA191 with an analog port to a Viking Electronics RAD-1A and PA-30 paging amplifier and installed three new 300AE paging horns for clear paging capability throughout the warehouse area. The synchronous 50 megabit internet connection is provided by AT&T fiber. Before the network replacement, even with the reliable fiber internet, the internet connectivity would waiver frequently. Now it is perfect. Spotty to no WIFI coverage is now excellent throughout the facility. Garbled phone conversations and paging are now crystal clear. The customer went from having little to no visibility or alerting into the functioning of the network and phone system to complete visibility with real-time monitoring and alerts. This is what a modern network and phone infrastructure can look like 21 years into the 21st Century. Previous network equipment and phone system New MDF cabinet New MX67 and MS120-48FP New paging system New IDF cabinet New MS120-24P New MR36 WIFI6 AP ... View more

Does anyone know if the Cisco  QSFP-H40G-CU5M= (40 gigabit direct attach cable) will work between the MS425 switches and the MS355 switches?  It's a 10x cost savings if they do.     ... View more

Here's a nifty new feature in the dashboard for everyone that manages multiple organizations.   No matter which organization you are logged in to, hit the / key and you can type in a MAC address and it will show you if any devices match that address, across all of the organizations that you have access to. And you can click on the device and it will take you right to it, even if it is in another organization that you are not currently looking at.   This is a great feature for MSP partners.   Hopefully only one device will show up. I have seen on really large (1000+) Cisco phone deployments in the past where two phones had the same MAC address. This was a real pain to hunt down with traditional Cisco routers and switches.                ... View more