If a client is having trouble associating to your Meraki Enterprise wireless network, one of the best troubleshooting tools at your disposal is the event log. You can find the log under Monitor -> Event log and see a detailed log of exactly what has been going on with your network.

The log captures various types of traffic on your network that can be very useful for troubleshooting:

802.1X – Authentication communication between the client and RADIUS server.

IP (Data) – Initial requests and responses between computers and servers, including HTTP.

802.11 – Association and disassociation of clients from the network.

DHCP – Lease information from the DHCP server about the client IP address, default gateway, and DNS server.

WPA – Password authentication of the client.

ARP – Requests by clients to find the MAC address associated to an IP address.

If a client is having trouble associating to the network, the event log can help you determine the most likely culprit. For example, you can easily tell if it’s related to a bad password or a failure to obtain an IP address and take the appropriate steps to get the user up and running again.

If you’d like to see more information captured in the event log, let us know by entering your feedback in the “Make a Wish” field on the Dashboard.

-Posted by Ahmed Akhtar

Do you have a multi-site wireless deployment that is giving you fits?  Does making a small change to your wireless configuration require manual intervention and painful coordination among sites?  Managing wireless implementations in different locations is a snap with Meraki.  Not only can you manage your networks from one centralized Dashboard, but in many cases, you will only need to create a one-time  Meraki network configuration that will scale to all of your sites.  Simply create your preferred wireless network configuration prior to deployment, and then add access points to each network as necessary.  Once these access points are plugged in, they will automatically “call home” to Meraki’s Cloud Controllers and configure themselves according to your Meraki Network’s configuration.  This greatly simplifies the regional deployment of your wireless networks.

After creating each of your regional networks, you can assign specific network administrators to each network for localized administration.  You may also assign read-only administrators if required to monitor user access and overall network performance.  With the combination of centralized configuration, ease of deployment, and shared network administration, your Meraki wireless networks are super scalable and perfect for multi-site deployments.

-Posted by Dan Pittelkow

Here at Meraki, we like to take the traditional network experience (read: complex and expensive) and turn it on its head by making it easier to use and manage while keeping it affordable.  Recently, our engineers have been working on identity-based policy enforcement, a feature set that is typically found in only the most complex and expensive wireless LAN solutions.  Meraki’s new Identity Policy Manager (IPM) offers identity-based policy controls, such as per-user VLAN tagging and per-user access control lists, coupled with the easy-to-use graphical interface that our customers have come to know and love.  We see a lot of higher education organizations use this feature set to create different access policies for the various students, faculty, and guests that access the wireless network.  We also have seen larger businesses use these features to enforce granular access control over multiple sites.

With Meraki, these schools and businesses can implement these same access policies without having to pay dearly for them.  And, if you’re used to having to read bulky administrator manuals to configure features like these, we’re sorry to report that you may have to find some new bedtime reading material: A Meraki wireless network is so easy to configure that you won’t have to read a single configuration guide.  (Feel free to contact us for some good book recommendations.)

Please see our press release about our new IPM product. As you’ll see, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is currently using IPM successfully today.  Others can look for it in a few weeks when it becomes generally available, at no additional cost to Enterprise customers.

- Posted by Jed Lau

Starting in 2003, I led the RoofNet project with Sanjit Biswas, Dan Aguayo and Prof. Robert Morris at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, MA.  We spent a huge amount of our time in the lab building prototypes, deploying networks ourselves, and working on technology to make wireless more reliable, accessible, and simpler. This work and technology served as the catalyst for Meraki’s formation, and 7 years later we’re proud to have the technology and product deployed across tens of thousands of networks and be the backbone of a company with incredible momentum.

Because CSAIL is the birthplace of Meraki and MIT is the alma mater of myself and Meraki’s two other co-founders, we have always felt a special connection to the university.

The future of networking is in wireless – it’s a requirement in the workplace and something everyone needs to be effective. Given this fact, and our strong ties to the MIT community, you can imagine our excitement in sharing that today, MIT’s CSAIL is now officially a customer of Meraki.  CSAIL made the decision to switch from its primary networking vendor, a well-known provider, because of a growing number of complaints about reliability, performance and manageability. MIT will deploy 80 Meraki MR14 access points to improve reliability and performance throughout the building for more than 800 faculty, staff, and students.

We are incredibly pleased to have partnered with MIT and CSAIL on this project, and look forward to supporting their initiatives with Meraki.

- Posted by John Bicket

Today we are very excited to announce the release of a new free tool for the IT community: the Meraki WiFi Stumbler, the first browser-based wireless scanner.  WiFi Stumbler provides detailed, real-time and continuously updated information about nearby wireless networks (even those with hidden SSIDs), including the type of access point, MAC address, wireless channel, signal strength, encryption type and more.  It also features built-in search, sorting and filtering capabilities to make it easy to quickly find the data that you need when in the field troubleshooting networks.

So what is cool about the fact that it runs in a browser?  This means that there is no need to download and install software, making it a very convenient tool that can you can quickly have up and running whenever you need it.  WiFi Stumbler will run in most browsers on either a PC or a Mac, and it can even be used when you are not connected to the Internet if your browser supports HTML5 offline mode (currently only Firefox 3.5, but Safari and Chrome support should follow soon as well).

You can use WiFi Stumbler to optimize coverage and performance of existing networks, troubleshoot wireless performance issues, find rogue APs and perform basic site surveys when planning deployments.

The Stumbler web page has the same clean, intuitive feel as the Meraki Dashboard that our customers have come to expect from our products.  Here is a screenshot:

We will be adding new features and functionality to Stumbler on an ongoing basis – these features will be available to all users as soon as they are released.  And since the tool is browser-based, there is no need to download and install the latest version of software, or add patches or software updates to get these features.  Just reload the tool in your browser and the updates will “magically” appear.

Check out http://meraki.com/tools/stumbler for more details and to try it out.  WiFi Stumbler is still in beta release, so if you find any bugs or have any suggestions for new features please let us know using the Wish box in the tool.

We hope you find this to be a useful addition to your toolkit!

-Posted by Greg Williams

We’re happy to share that we’ve launched the Meraki Network Simulator: a free demo version of the Meraki Enterprise Cloud Controller that allows you to try out all of our web-based tools without purchasing or setting up physical access points.  For a long time, we’ve wanted to enable potential customers to test out the Meraki Dashboard without physical hardware.  The Meraki Cloud Controller is the most unique piece of our wireless LAN offering, providing simple centralized management to network administrators any time and any place over the web.  You really have to experience it personally to understand why it’s such a revolutionary way to manage your network.

The Meraki Network Simulator contains several sample networks that allow you to see how Meraki could work for you.  We’ve even populated the Cloud Controller with real-life data that we’ve captured and anonymized, so you can get a realistic picture of how the Meraki Dashboard looks on a live network.  Here’s a taste of what you can do with the simulator:

• Test-drive the Meraki Enterprise Cloud Controller for free, without purchasing hardware
• Experience the complete Cloud Controller configuration UI

• Test-drive Meraki’s network monitoring features

• Try out sample networks for office, university, and conference use cases

• Create your own blank network simulation and set it up from scratch, configuring simulated access points

Try it out and let us know what you think!

- Marie Williams

When you’re investigating mesh wireless issues, it’s important to know which mesh neighbors are seen by each access point (AP).  Here is a quick tutorial of how to best utilize the built-in features in Dashboard that allow you to check out who is talking to whom in the mesh and what the quality of the links are:

1. In the Dashboard, go to Monitor -> Access points.
2. Click an AP in the list.

3. Scroll down to the section Neighbors. (See screen shot below).

The Neighbors section reveals the mesh APs seen by the AP you’re currently looking at. Using the example above, the AP is directly communicating with four mesh neighbors: Outdoor, Indoor, MR14, and MR58. The other columns in the table provide useful information for troubleshooting wireless problems:

Dist (m)
Shows the distance from the AP to each neighbor in meters (Make sure to place the APs on the map accurately in order for these distances to be meaningful).

Radio
Describes which radio (if neighbor is a multi-radio device) of the neighbor is communicating with the AP.

Signal (dB)
Measures the received signal strength indication (RSSI) of the RF signal from the neighbor. This measurement correlates to a value in decibels (dB). For example, an RSSI of 10 is considered a very weak signal. To improve the signal: move APs closer to each other; create a better line-of-sight; consider using a more powerful antenna; eliminate RF interference; or try a different RF channel.

Fwd
Reports the percentage of packets successfully delivered from the AP to its neighbor. For example, 75% means that 3 out of every 4 packets made it to the neighbor from the AP; in other words, there’s 25% loss.  Good quality links typically will show no more than 10-15% packet loss.

Rev
Reports the percentage of packets successfully delivered from the neighbor to the AP. Good quality links will typically have no more than 10-15% packet loss.
If you don’t see a particular mesh AP in the list, that means the AP you’re looking at can’t see it. If it could, that mesh AP would be present in the Neighbors list.

Can you think of other information you’d like to see reported in the Dashboard? Let us know by entering your feedback in the “make a wish” field.

-Posted by Ahmed Akhtar

Our engineers are pretty busy and pretty humble, so a lot of what they do flies below the radar.
I’ve worked closely with rockstar engineers from Google, Apple, and the like, but the way our folks
operate blows my mind.

As those of you who use our product know, we have a “Make a Wish” widget at the bottom of every page in our app.
This lets users provide product feedback quickly and easily, which goes straight to our engineering and PM teams.

Below is a recent message received through Make a Wish, and the response from engineering. Take a close look at the timestamps.

A lot of the improvements our engineers make to the product happen without press releases, parties, and fanfare, so I wanted to shed some light on the kind of improvements that happen every day. Exchanges like this also reveal how helpful our customers are. The product wouldn’t be what it is without their feedback.

Lastly, it would be impossible to move this quickly while maintaining the reliability that our enterprise customers
expect without the big investment that our engineers have made in robust automated testing systems. This takes a lot of time and dicipline. While this work goes unseen outside of Meraki, the constant stream of new features and improvements, year after year, would be impossible without it.

Hats off!

Last week we upgraded all Standard networks to Pro at no charge. We thought we could provide the best service to our Standard customers by consolidating Standard and Pro to offer the same feature set.

This upgrade means Standard network operators will have the exact same features as Pro, including billing features, captive portal control, and our recently expanded Pro features such as splash pages and encryption on both SSIDs.

We hope everyone enjoys the new features!

I’m happy to announce that PC Magazine has presented us with the coveted Editor’s Choice award for our enterprise wireless LAN solution!  Arriving on the heels of a 4-out-of-5-stars review, which you can read here, the Editor’s Choice award is bestowed upon only the top 17% of products reviewed by PC Magazine.

We are humbled by the glowing review and award.   By receiving them, we further dedicate ourselves to our mission to provide an affordable yet feature-rich wireless LAN solution that is easy to deploy and manage.  It is this benefit that delights our customers and that is clearly resonating in the market.

- Posted by Jed Lau

Over the past two weeks, all of us at Meraki have been following the news about the earthquake in Haiti and trying to find ways to help. It’s hard to imagine what daily life is like for the millions who were affected, but we hope the international community’s aid efforts will help re-build the country as quickly as possible.

As a company, we wanted to do our part to contribute to the relief efforts. Last week, we sent a shipment of outdoor and solar APs to Partners in Health who have set up ten satellite connected clinics throughout Haiti. We hope these APs will help connect the thousands of doctors and relief workers in the months ahead.

If you’re not already familiar with PIH (www.pih.org) from Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains beyond Mountains, it’s worth checking out the website at pih.org to see all the work they’ve done in Haiti over the past 20 years. I was first introduced to the organization by one of their active volunteers, Paul English (the co-founder of Kayak.com) who I met at the World Economic Forum in 2008.  I have since come to admire PIH and its founder Dr. Paul Farmer deeply – their relentless drive to improve the health of Haitians is nothing short of inspiring.

Partners in Health is doing courageous work, and if you’re looking for a way to help Haiti, please consider making a donation to their cause. I’m confident it’ll be put to good use.

- Posted by Sanjit Biswas

We’re excited to kick off the new year with a new webinar series. Over the next eight weeks, we will be discussing a variety of wireless topics – from enabling guest access to debugging client connectivity issues and more. We are particularly looking forward to giving each attendee a FREE Meraki Indoor access point with a 3-year Enterprise Cloud Controller license (a $450 value!).

We’ll have sessions every two weeks, covering the following subjects:

Deploying Guest Wireless Access

Multi-site Wireless Management and Remote Help Desk

Wireless Authentication

Upgrading to 802.11n

Our first session – on deploying guest wireless access – kicks off next Wednesday, January 13. Guests increasingly expect wireless Internet access when they visit your organization, be it an office, campus or other facility. Learn how to get set up painlessly and inexpensively, as we discuss the requirements and options for guest wireless systems, including tips for deployment with minimal expense and complexity.

Sign up for next Wednesday’s webinar here (Update: if you want to sign up for upcoming webinars, go here), and check out the complete schedule below:

Deploying Guest Wireless Access
Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010
11:00-11:45 am (Pacific Time)

Multi-Site Wireless Management & Remote Help Desk
Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010
11:00-11:45 am (Pacific Time)

Wireless Authentication
Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2010
11:00-11:45 am (Pacific Time)

Upgrading to 802.11n
Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2010
11:00-11:45 am (Pacific Time)

-Posted by Marie Williams

We’ve got two big announcements today for our enterprise customers – significant new product features, and a lifetime warranty on all indoor enterprise access points!

Lifetime Warranty on Indoor Enterprise APs

We put a lot of care into building solid, high-quality products. We think our APs should last a lifetime, and now we’re putting our money where our mouth is.

Effective immediately, all of our enterprise-class indoor access points – including our most popular model, the MR14 – are covered by a lifetime warranty. This upgraded coverage applies retroactively to existing units as well as to new purchases, and is free of charge.

We’re also offering free advanced shipping – a first in our industry. This means that if your access points need replacement, we’ll ship out new units immediately, rather than waiting to receive your APs before sending out replacements.

Since we’ve seen very few failures, these new policies won’t affect the vast majority of you.  But we hope that these policies will make infrastructure budget planning easier for some, and add peace of mind for all.

New Enterprise Features

We’ve been working hard on new features for our enterprise products and we’re excited to announce that they’re available for you to use on your networks today.

Network Analytics

We now automatically generate periodic analytics reports of the activity on your wireless network. These reports show the usage and reliability of the wireless network, bandwidth trends, device popularity, mobility, and more. These are great for network operators, as well as their staff and management. We’ve even had beta users post parts of the reports to their blogs. Wondering which operating systems are most popular on the Stanford Computer Science department’s wireless network? See here. (Hint – Apple is taking over the world.)

Check out a complete sample, from Stanford’s Computer Science Department:

Rogue AP Detection

This feature protects against 2 kinds of security risks.  In one, a hacker can place an access point near your network that broadcasts the same SSID as your legitimate device.  If users inadvertently connect to it, they could enter sensitive information (like their network login) into the malicious device.  In the second case, one could plug a wireless access point into the wired LAN, without the appropriate encryption and access control – providing an opening into your network.  More often than not, this is done by an employee who does not know that he is putting the network at risk.

These two types of “rogue APs” can be detected with dedicated software tools – provided you physically walk around your coverage area with a laptop.  We’ve integrated rogue AP detection into our access points and monitoring software, so the Meraki network can continually monitor the airwaves for you and alert you upon signs of trouble.

Here at Meraki’s San Francisco office, our engineers plug in test devices left and right, giving a fertile testing ground for this feature:

Event Logging

We now expose fine-grained event logs in the Meraki Cloud Controller, giving precise visibility into where, when, and how devices are connecting to the network, and aiding in troubleshooting and device tracking.

Support for 16 SSIDs

We’ve upped the maximum number of SSIDs from 4 to 16.  While most customers have one SSID for their secure corporate network, and another open network for guests, some of our users have dedicated virtual networks for specialized equipment and devices, SSIDs with different bandwidth limits, etc.  Westmont College, one of our customers whom we’ve mentioned on the blog before,  has an SSID for their WiFi-controlled HVAC system, and Stanford’s Computer Science department has a dedicated SSID for their experimental robots!  Now that we support 16 SSIDs, you can have a dedicated SSID for your wireless toaster oven and not run out.

Availability (and the beauty of SaaS)

Since the Meraki Cloud Controller is a cloud-based software service, these features (and many other improvements) are available immediately – with no upgrades to purchase, and no software to download or install.

Within the next few days and weeks, we’ll dive deeper into some of these features here on the blog – exploring use cases, tips, and tricks.  In the mean time, give them a spin on your networks!

-Posted by Kiren Sekar

Meraki had a blast at last week’s IT Roadmap Expo, hosted by Network World.  For this expo we brightened up our booth with a dunk tank!  Our office in SF is terrorized by Nerf darts – we thought we’d bring a few out to the Expo for some fun, and show off the impeccable waterproofing of the Meraki Outdoor. Attendees who shot the (lit up) Meraki Outdoor into the water tank were entered into a raffle for a pair of iPod Touches. Congrats to winners Anthony and Yuan – enjoy the iPods (or one less item on your holiday shopping list).

Aside from the entertainment and errant splashes, we were excited to show off our products to the attendees.  As always, it was energizing to see their faces light up as we demoed the Cloud Controller dashboard.  We were also happy to see several of our customers drop by and say hi.

We’ll be out on the road again soon, and hope to see some of you – keep checking back for updates!  In the meantime, here’s a short recap of the event:

- Posted by Amy Zhou

We are pleased to announce that Techworld has awarded Meraki the 2009 Mobility/Wireless Product of the Year for the MR14 dual-radio 802.11n access point.  I had the opportunity to travel to London to receive our award, meet the judges and award recipients, and be interviewed by Techworld.

Techworld’s review of Meraki, which appears below from their website, speaks for itself.  The full list of award winners is available here.

Thanks to Techworld for the recognition!  We are humbled and honored to have been selected out of a field of such distinguished candidates.

-Posted by Jed Lau