SSID Schedule By AP

[AdrianS]

I have an SSID that’s available at two different sites (Public WiFi). I have a need for the availability schedule of this SSID to be different for each site. 

How can I accomplish this?

[MerakiDave · Accepted solution]

SSID Availability is per-SSID and by AP tags, so you wouldn't be able to have different APs advertise that SSID on different schedules.  But if it's two different sites, they should probably be in separate Dashboard networks anyway, and then you would have that option, no problem.  It's best practice anyway to have one Dashboard wireless network, and therefore a single AutoRF domain, per site, that way the APs at one site don't impact any RF decisions at the other site.  Hope that helps, unless I misunderstood the question.

[AdrianS]

Hi @MerakiDave,

Thanks for the reply. I will look into a separate dashboard network. Assuming I need the same SSIDs at both sites, is there an easy way to duplicate what’s been done in one dashboard network and apply that to another. Are there licensing implications with creating a new dashboard network?

Thanks.

[MerakiDave]

Yes, you simply go to Organization > Create Network, and you can choose a radio button to clone the settings from an existing network.  There is no license needed, the Dashboard license is at the Organization level, so you can create as many networks as needed and spread out your equipment site by site.  So when you go to Organization > License info, that shows all of the equipment that is licensed for the whole Org, regardless of how many or how few Dashboard networks you decide to configure.  Hope that helps!

[JeroenLicht]

Hi MerakiDave, What's the point of central management when you state: "But if it's two different sites, they should probably be in separate Dashboard networks anyway," Meraki should be the solution when you want to have your IT centralized. We wanted to get rid of the idea to manage each device individually, now you come to get almost a Dashboard per device. I was not the one having the question, nor the right answer. BR, Jeroen.

[BrechtSchamp]

@JeroenLicht The idea is: One organization. One network per site. If sites are similar, leverage templates to make setup more efficient and consistent.

[AdrianS]

@MerakiDave This should work for what I need to do. I'm guessing once I've cloned the network, at that point they are completely separate and changes will need to be made on both networks? This would be the only downside to this method that I can see, rather than managing one SSID for the organization, I'll need to now manage one per site, despite the fact that the SSID is virtually the same per site. I've accepted your reply as a solution.

For the sake of argument, I can still see a use case for allowing multiple schedules for a single SSID. Perhaps you want the SSID only to be available at two distinct times during the day, or in my case you want different APs to run different schedules for the SSID. I would think this could be implemented by use of tags, whereby you tag the APs you want to run on a particular SSID schedule.

Thank you for the help.

[BrechtSchamp]

I (briefly) mentioned this in my previous post but I'll repeat it again as I may have been a bit brief. If you don't want to have to do all changes twice you should look into templating. Making changes in the template would then result in all instances of the template being changed.

More info here:

https://documentation.meraki.com/zGeneral_Administration/Templates_and_Config_Sync/Managing_Multiple...

---

[AdrianS]

Great. I'll look into templates. Thank you!

[MerakiDave]

Thanks @AdrianS for the added feedback and thanks @BrechtSchamp for the assisting!  In addition to leveraging configuration templates, you also have the option of using the Dashboard API perhaps.  In general, when it comes to things like large scale deployments, or very repetitive tasks, templates can be great, but there might also be an option to do those things programatically with a simple script making API calls as it iterates through dozens or hundreds of networks in your organization.  

@JeroenLicht sorry if I gave the impression that separate networks would add complexity.  As @BrechtSchamp mentioned, the idea is an "Organization" of "Networks", so it's all still a single pane of glass for management.  Think of a "network" as really just a configuration container.  And typically a network corresponds with a physical location like a building or a campus.  Think of a K12 school district, where they have a Dashboard network for each school, that is the best and common practice for a number of reasons, but still allows you to easily jump from school to school for management and configuration, as well as run summary reports across specific schools, or the entire district at the Org level.  Many school districts do just that, some also leverage config templates, some leverage scripting and the API, and some still do things manually school by school which can be repetitive but still simple.

[AdrianS]

@BrechtSchampI looked at templates briefly, but it does not appear that SSID availability can be locally overridden when using templates and all networks bound to a template must use the template defined SSID availability schedule, so this wouldn't work for my specific need.

This would be useful for networks that are all completely identical however, so thanks for the info.