Meraki

Bruce · ‎Jan 14 2023

There’s no exact replacements, and the actual model numbers will vary depending on the Meraki access point you’re using. Assuming you are planning to use an MR46E then… AIR-ANT2524DW-R => MA-ANT-3-B6 Just as you concluded, the are dipoles with an articulated joint. AIR-ANT2566P4W-R => MA-ANT-3-E6 The Azimuth/Horizontal half power beam width is about half on the Meraki antenna compared with the Cisco one, so you may need some coverage re-work depending on the existing AP placement. It may be that the C6/D6 (Omni panel) models are a better replacement if the Cisco antennas are ceiling mounted radiating downward. AIR-ANT2566D4M-R => MA-ANT-3-E6 These will be pretty much the same. The F6 has a narrower beam width (about half that of the E6), so stay with the E6 for the closet match. AIR-ANT2535SDW-R => I think MA-ANT-3-A6 Spot on, these are non-articulated dipoles. Hope this helps.

Bruce · ‎Jan 14 2023

Clients have to support OWE to make use of it. I haven’t implemented OWE yet, but I’m wondering whether what you’re seeing is Meraki presenting you with both an OWE enabled SSID (the one with a lock), and an open SSID (the one without the lock). This would allow clients that don’t support OWE to still connect to your guest network. If this is the case, then to remove the the SSID with the ‘lock’, you’ll need to revert to using an Open SSID. I’m sure things will change when there is more support and adoption of WPA3/OWE.

Bruce · ‎Jan 11 2023

Yep, with the randomised MAC addresses that are used by virtually every OS now, this is hard to implement. You have to flip it on its head and ensure you are only permitting the devices you want to access your network, and block everything else.

Bruce · ‎Jan 9 2023

Assuming these are all /24 subnets the the 192.168.20.99 device shouldn’t be ARPing for 192.168.100.253, it should be ARPing for the gateway address. I’d get the subnet mask and default gateway configuration on 192.168.20.99 checked.

Bruce · ‎Jan 9 2023

What addressing mode are you using on the wireless SSID? Sounds like you might be using NAT mode, which means all traffic from the SSID will be NATed to the access point’s IP address. You’ll want to move to bridge mode so that the IP address doesn’t get modified.

Bruce · ‎Jan 9 2023

Yes this should work fine. Note that the PAT that The MX performs will always use the address assigned to the WAN interface. The addresses in the additional /29 can be used to 1:1 NAT, or 1:many NAT configured through the Dashboard.

Bruce · ‎Jan 4 2023

What are the IP subnets on the other VLANs you have? I’m wondering if you are accidentally overlapping VLANs. Normally the Meraki Dashboard stops this or warns about it, but maybe somehow it’s not detecting the overlap.

Bruce · ‎Jun 17 2022

What do you mean my filter client VPN connections by IP address? Are you trying to restrict the IP addresses that can connect to the MX? In which case, how are you going to determine the IP addresses since they’re likely to be dynamic at the remote end? If you mean filter what they can access within your network then you can use Group Policy, depending on whether you’re using L2TP or AnyConnect will determine how well this can be implemented (AnyConnect offers the better solution).

Bruce · ‎May 31 2022

I don’t believe you can do this directly with AnyConnect. What you’ll need to do is RADIUs authentication which returns a Filter-ID parameter that the MX then uses to apply a Meraki Group Policy to the user. Have a look in here under the Group Policy section, https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/AnyConnect_on_the_MX_Appliance. The other option is once the device is connected to the VPN, find it in the client list on the Dashboard and manually apply a Group Policy to it.

Bruce · ‎May 30 2022

The MR76 has 4x antenna connectors. One pair for 2.4GHz and the other pair for 5GHz. One MA-ANT-23 connects to both the 2.4GHz connectors. If you’re not going to use the 5GHz radio then you need to properly cap them and make sure the radio is turned off. Personally I’d set up the 5GHz antenna too, that frequency is less congested and provides better performance, and if you don’t use it now you may in the future (and it’s easier to set it up once rather than revisit APs 10m in the air). With regards to will the signal reach 30m down an aisle, that depends on how the antenna is positioned relative to the aisle and how it is angled. You can get an idea from the antenna data sheet, https://meraki.cisco.com/lib/pdf/meraki_datasheet_antenna_2GHz_sector_11dBi.pdf, but performing a real world test with an AP and an antenna is the only way to be sure you get the experience you require.

Bruce · ‎May 29 2022

Yes, the subnet that you’re using for remote access VPN (either AnyConnect or L2TP) only needs to be configured on the AnyConnect or L2TP page, you don’t need it configured on the “Addressing & VLAN” page.

Bruce · ‎May 13 2022

I believe it’s one of those ‘depends’ answers. If the rules in the policies are 40 rules with Layer 4 ports then I’d say no, as the minute any GP ACL is applied you’ve exceeded the switch capacity. If you have less Layer 4 rules, say 15 per GP, then so long as all the clients connected to the switch only use two GP ACLs then you should be fine. The question really is, what’s the definition of a Layer 4 rule? Is it any rule, or just one that specifies a specific Layer 4 port. And that I think is the real question….

Bruce · ‎May 13 2022

In answer to your questions: 1. Yes, you are missing something. 2. No, you don’t need a static IP address for the Z3, Auto VPN takes care of that. Regarding the IP addressing the printer will need an IP address for the subnet in the secondary office. Without knowing how your secondary office is currently configured it’s hard to say how best to add the Z3 in. Generally though the approach would be: internet connection terminates on Z3, make sure the LAN addressing on VLAN1 at the secondary office is different to the primary office, enable the primary office MX64 as an Auto VPN hub and add the primary office VLAN to the VPN, enable the Z3 as a Auto VPN spoke, select the MX64 as the hub (don’t select default route) and add the secondary office VLAN to the VPN. Now connect the printer to the Z3 at the secondary office, and also the PC (you no longer need to use the client VPN at the secondary office). And if all that works then the primary and secondary offices should be able ‘talk’ to each other, and so you should be able to print from anywhere on your LAN to any printer at either office.

Bruce · ‎May 5 2022

If you don’t want to go full MDM, and you’re happy for your users to do some self-enrolment then you can look at using Meraki Trusted Access, https://documentation.meraki.com/General_Administration/Cross-Platform_Content/Trusted_Access_for_Secure_Wireless_Connectivity. It still requires a systems manager license per device, but might not put such a heavy burden as managing the full MDM.

Bruce · ‎May 2 2022

From my understanding (which may be out of dat now), Meraki use MaxMind for their Geo IP database. You can use tools on their site (the demo portal) to test the location of up to 25 addresses a day. I was always of the understanding that the Geo-blocking only works in the upstream (outbound) direction. So if you have traffic coming from a blocked country it will potentially hit the servers (firewall rules permitting), but any return traffic will be dropped. This prevents and TCP connections from establishing, but does mean you potentially see traffic from ‘blocked’ countries hitting your servers - e.g. TCP SYNs, UDP and ICMP traffic. You’d need to check this to be sure though.

Bruce · ‎May 2 2022

Not sure what your setup looks like, but make sure you only have one link from the switch to each of the MXs, and make sure there is no link directly between the MXs. Double check all your cables too, and make sure they are good.

Bruce · ‎Apr 19 2022

I very much doubt this is going to provide you what you want. When a machine connects to the network it requests an IP address, and you may through a lookup or another system be able to identify exactly who that machine belongs to. However, very few machines will release an IP address ‘cleanly’, most just go out of range and the lease on the server eventually expires, so you have no idea when a machine actually left. If you want to go down an automated attendance path then you might be better off using a location based system, either using the Meraki location APIs to determine which machines are onsite, or using another application (e.g. who’s on location) that can interface with the GPS locator in a device.

Bruce · ‎Apr 2 2022

@RaphaelL Well done on the 250 posts, and glad you’re enjoying the Meraki experience.

Bruce · ‎Mar 28 2022

I would recommend that you set up your device and do a wireless survey of the site to see if it provides the coverage you desire. The coverage from the MX-W devices is okay, but not as great as the MRs. The MX-W devices are only Wifi5, and you can’t really move the MX to the ‘ideal position to achieve the best coverage’, more often you are stuck with where the WAN service is delivered and other Ethernet cables connect to the MX. If you’re only talking a handful of users and the site is unlikely to grow then the MX-W may be the go, but I’d seriously consider a non-W MX with an MR, and a small PoE switch if you need it (or the MX68 which has two PoE ports).

Bruce · ‎Mar 24 2022

When you are running an SSID in NAT mode all the clients on the wireless side will be using a DNS server of 10.128.128.128. The AP just acts as a forwarder and forwards those requests to the custom DNS servers that you have defined if the hostnames are not already cached. See here https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Client_Addressing_and_Bridging/DNS_and_NAT_Mode. What I suspect you are seeing is a browser (e.g. Firefox, Chrome) using DNS over HTTPS (DoH) to server IP addresses defined in Chrome - essentially bypassing the normal DNS mechanism, and your filtering solution. Have a Google of ‘Chrome DoH’ for some more information. Unfortunately this is a difficult one to prevent if it’s on devices you don’t manage.

Bruce · ‎Mar 24 2022

Python and Meraki go well together, it’s great for automation. There’s heaps of people here who can lend a hand if you run into any issues.

Bruce · ‎Mar 24 2022

Welcome @SkiComputer, and the niceness extends well beyond the APs, it’s all pretty much great.

Bruce · ‎Mar 24 2022

I’ve never seen a radiation pattern for the MX-W devices. My assumption has always been that it is roughly spherical to the extent that it really matters - but I may be completely wrong. What are you trying to do that you need to know this?

Bruce · ‎Mar 22 2022

The issue is this statement in the document… You can’t do a SAML login from the Service Provider (I.e. the Dashboard). You need to login through the identity provider (IdP) and it should then redirect you to the Dashboard and pass the SAML token in the process.

Bruce · ‎Mar 22 2022

And remember that if the warranty response time isn’t inline with your requirements, e.g. you want a 4 hour advance replacement (not something you’d normally want on an access point), or if the warranty is only for a year and you want to extend it, then you can get MerakiNow which is very similar to SmartNet in that it provides hardware replacement.

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