Event Logs

If you ever wanted to know all the changes that have happened on your switch network, our event log lets you view all the changes in your virtual stack to see events such as STP enabled/disabled, ports enabled/disabled, Live Tools tests that were run such as cable tests, and more. This gives you a historical view that’s useful if you want to correlate an event such as a network outage with configuration changes on your switches. You can find Event Log under Monitor>Event Log.

Figure 1: Searchable event log

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept of the virtual stack, this is an industry-first technology that provides centralized management of up to 10,000 switch ports. Unlike traditional stacking, virtually stacked switches can be in different physical locations, simplifying large scale and distributed deployments.

While our event log provides an easy way to see historical information, sometimes you need to do some live troubleshooting, and this is where the power of our Live Tools comes in.

Live Tools – Cable Test and Packet Capture

When it’s time for a network refresh, oftentimes you leave the existing wiring infrastructure in place and just replace your switches. This means that the quality of an Ethernet cable is unknown, and this could lead to hours of frustration when a user complains that their connection is down. You could spend hours debugging a healthy switch when the problem is simply a cabling issue. With our integrated cable test, you can quickly and easily see if the cabling is an issue or if it’s something more serious. You don’t need to be on site to run this test, and the end client doesn’t even need to be plugged in for it to work! You can find this useful tool in the Meraki dashboard under Monitor > Switches.

Figure 2: Built-in cable testing

Event logs and cable tests are great for troubleshooting common networking issues, but what if you need to really dive into the bits and bytes of a packet? The MS Switches now have a powerful packet capture tool which lets you quickly and easily capture packets on one port or multiple ports for further analysis. You can even download the output as a PCAP file for analysis using Wireshark, a popular free network protocol analyzer. If you’ve ever tried capturing packets before, you know what a pain it is: you have to set up port mirroring, assign a new VLAN, and load specialized software on your laptop. With our packet capture tool, we make it one step and you can do it remotely from the comfort of your office or home! You can find the tool under Monitor > Packet capture.

Figure 3: Integrated packet capture

If you do not see these features on your dashboard, you may require a firmware upgrade. Please contact support@meraki.com to schedule the upgrade.

Don’t forget to check out our new features under the Help > New features page regularly. We are constantly adding more exciting features and we’re expanding and improving existing features!

Finally, if you’re interested in seeing switches in the Meraki dashboard, watch the demo at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KViCLMKXpkA

Voice VLAN

Using the power of  cloud-managed networks, it is extremely easy to configure a voice VLAN on the MS series switch. What is a voice VLAN, you may ask? Often times, you may not have enough ports to connect each employee’s workstation and VoIP phone to your network. For this reason, most VoIP phone manufacturers add an extra port for workstations to connect to. However, your infrastructure may have a separate VLAN for data that the phone is not automatically configured for. In this scenario, configuring a voice VLAN may be crucial as it allows the switch to communicate with the VoIP phones and properly tag voice data.

The option to configure a voice VLAN is available in the pop-up menu to update the port(s). In the Configure > Switch Ports page, choose the ports to which you’d like to assign a voice VLAN, and then click “Edit selected items” button on the upper left corner. The menu shown below will appear, and this example assumes VLAN 200 is the voice VLAN.

Figure 1: Assigning a voice VLAN

Once you have made the port configuration changes, the setup below will allow for your voice and data traffic to make it to their respective VLANs. In addition, the port will accept tagged frames and send LLDP advertisements that include voice VLAN and QoS information.

Figure 2: Typical voice and data port configuration

Quality of Service (QoS)
If your network is like most of today’s business networks, you have a need for QoS (802.11p). Luckily for you, configuring this with your MS Series switch is a total breeze. The Meraki MS Series switches support up to 6 queues per port for QoS and CoS prioritization via the DiffServ model.

Whether prioritizing for voice traffic or other high demand services that require low jitter (e.g., video conferencing), setting up QoS via the dashboard is hassle-free. In the Configure > Switch settings page, you will see the QoS section. Here specify switches to either trust incoming DSCP markings or set the DSCP to a particular code and class.

Figure 3: QoS configuration

Port mirroring

Port mirroring is very useful for network devices that require monitoring of network traffic, such as a VoIP recording solution or an IDS (intrusion detection system).

To enable port mirroring, navigate to the Configure > Switch settings page and locate the “Port Mirroring” section. In the example below, VoIP phones are connected to ports 4-10, and these ports are mirrored to port 22. This essentially makes a carbon copy of all data that traverses ports 4-10.

Figure 4: Port mirroring configuration

If you do not see these features on your dashboard, you may require a firmware upgrade. Please contact support@meraki.com to schedule the upgrade.

Don’t forget to check out our new features under the Help > New features page regularly. We are constantly adding more exciting features and we’re expanding and improving existing features!

Meraki Systems Manager allows you to configure, monitor and update your mobile clients, from iPods to iPads, Macs to PCs, in real time from the cloud. Meraki Systems Manager lets you manage clients running Microsoft Windows, including XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, as well as Mac OS X versions 10.5 through 10.7.  With Systems Manager, you can:

• instantly search and find your clients, with useful live-diagnostic tools to monitor performance
• install applications simultaneously across all your clients, or specific groups of clients, with just a single click
• receive email alerts for important events, such as when software is installed on a client or if it goes offline
• identify clients running outdated software, track down compliance or licensing issues, and identify unauthorized third-party software installed on your clients

How to get started:

Step 1: Create a Systems Manager account here

Step 2: The next step is to configure the Systems Manager in each client device. You can find instructions for various operating systems on the Systems Manager Overview page in the dashboard. If you want to configure the Systems Manager agent via Active Directory GPO (Group Policy Object), we have a video and article to show you how to do this. Once Systems Manager is configured, the client will automatically connect to Meraki’s datacenters within a couple of minutes. You’ll be able to see the client on the map and listed in the clients page in the dashboard.

Bonus tips for iOS clients

For iOS devices, here are a couple more quick tips. On the Configure > iOS profiles page, you can create various profile groups. The profile settings for each group apply only to the clients which are members of that group. Don’t forget to save your changes.

On the Configure > iOS settings page, you can set security restrictions on device functionalities, applications and content. You can apply these restrictions across all your iOS clients, or only for those clients with a specific profile (use the drop down box as seen below), simply by checking or un-checking the restriction policy. For example, you can disallow the user to install apps, use the device’s camera, play multiplayer games, watch YouTube, or play explicit music and podcasts. Another popular security feature you can enforce from this page is the use of a passcode: you can set a minimum passcode length, minimum number of complex characters and maximum number of failed attempts before all data on device will be erased.

Lastly, on the Configure > iOS apps page, you can install applications across all your iOS clients or a selected group of clients. To install a new application, click on the “Add a new iOS App” link on the top right hand corner.

This will take you to a search bar that is linked to the Apple app store. Simply enter the topic of the app you’re looking for in the search bar and click “Search”. Here I am looking for an app for transportation maps of San Francisco and I’ve found one that I like. Click “Add” to add the app to your client devices.

After adding the app from the Apple app store, you will see it at the bottom of the iOS app page. You can also specify which client devices will have this app installed by defining the scope of the installation.

Don’t forget to check out the new features in the Feedback > What’s new page. We are constantly adding more exciting features and we’re expanding and improving existing features.

Here’s an example introducing our new, mobile-friendly splash page theme called Fluid:

Don’t forget that you can submit a feature or enhancement request through the “make a wish” tool on the bottom-right corner of any page in the Meraki dashboard. Our engineering and product management teams keep a close eye on these requests.

• improves FTP performance by up to 209X
• improves HTTP performance by up to 45X
• improves Windows file sharing performance by up to 16X

The full Tolly Group report is available for download from our web site.

Configuring WAN optimization on the MX couldn’t be easier: all it takes is a single click to enable it. You’ll find this in the Configure > VPN page.

Figure 1: WAN optimization configuration

After that, the MXs that are part of the site-to-site VPN network will accelerate the FTP, HTTP, Windows file sharing (CIFS/SMB) and TCP-based traffic between them. There’s no additional cost to roll this out, and WAN optimization is available on the MX for customers with both the Enterprise and Advanced Security licenses.

Here’s a look at the WAN optimization of traffic between Meraki’s branches and San Francisco headquarters. At the time of this snapshot, the amount of data transfered across the WAN was reduced by 95.2%.

Figure 2: WAN optimization and bandwidth reduction

WAN optimization is available on all MX Cloud Managed Security Appliances. The MX80, MX90, and MX400 include a 1 TB hard drive for local caching, and the MX600 includes a 4 TB (RAID) drive. The MX60 doesn’t include an internal hard drive, but it still benefits from WAN optimization’s compression and protocol optimization.

By using WAN optimization technology built in to the Meraki MX, administrators can dramatically reduce bandwidth costs and accelerate application performance for traffic that flows between sites of a distributed network. Slow, high latency WAN links that connect branches can be accelerated, making the WAN feel like the LAN for users at remote sites.

First up was Meraki’s CEO and co-founder, Sanjit Biswas:

CEO Sanjit Biswas talks about founding and developing Meraki from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Yours truly showed off Meraki’s Cloud Managed Wireless through the Meraki dashboard, with a brief tour of Cloud Managed Security Appliances and Switches towards the end of the demo:

Live demonstrations of Meraki Wi-Fi gear with Pablo Estrada from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

Some of the delegates have graciously written about their visit to Meraki and initial impressions after using their Meraki MR16 Cloud Managed Access Points:

• Daniel Cybulskie: Meraki Systems Manager Review – WFD2
• Tom Hollingsworth: Meraki – Wireless Field Day 2
• Matthew Norwood: Meraki
• Samuel Clements: Wireless Tech Field 2 – Recap and first looks

Jennifer Huber and Stephen Foskett were the unofficial photographers of Wireless Field Day 2, and they’ve both shared some wonderful photos of their visit to Meraki and the rest of Wireless Field Day 2.

• Flickr set by Stephen Foskett: WFD2 Meraki
• Flickr set by Jennifer Huber: Wireless Field Day 2 – Meraki

We really enjoyed meeting the delegates in person and only wish we could have spent more time together. Until next time, delegates!

At a 10,000 foot level, communication between your network and Meraki’s cloud is for management and configuration data, so if your connection to the cloud is interrupted, your network continues to function and end users won’t notice a difference. All of the features that affect data flow continue uninterrupted. For example:

• Users stay authenticated
• New users can authenticate
• Firewall policies continue to be enforced
• Data encryption/decryption is maintained
• Layer 7 traffic shaping rules continue to be enforced
• Wireless mesh routing operates with full functionality
• Users can roam between wireless APs
• VPN tunnels (site to site, teleworker, and client VPN) continue to operate
• RF features like Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) continue
• Performance remains at 100%

How does Meraki’s out-of-band cloud management work? This functionality would not have been possible 10 years ago, but thanks to Moore’s Law and clever engineers at Meraki, we’ve packed enough computing power and memory on every wireless access point, Ethernet switch, and security appliance to do all of the required packet processing internally, without any back-and-forth communication with the cloud. The packet processing software is also very tight, optimized to run efficiently on Meraki devices (similar to how engineers at Apple and Google write advanced applications for iOS and Android devices.) For some features, such as wireless mesh routing, the Meraki devices even communicate between one another on your local network (bypassing the cloud) in order to configure and optimize.

The traffic separation looks something like this:

Meraki runs multiple datacenters around the world, and every customer network is served by at least three independent datacenters. So if a natural disaster were to take out a datacenter that served your network, we’d simply fail over to another datacenter in a different part of the world. All of the configuration data, historical logs, etc. are mirrored in near-real time (at most 60-second lag, typically much less), so in these unlikely events, everything is the way you left it.

Of course, if you lose connectivity to Meraki’s cloud (say because your ISP has an outage), you will temporarily be unable to access reports or make config changes. But if your network is anything like ours, if your WAN link goes down, you’re in fire-fighting mode, not tweaking your wireless config.

 

As an aside, if you’re looking for a cost-effective way to improve your WAN availability, check out our MX security appliances – they’ve got built-in WAN link balancing and failover, so you can run 2 WAN connections into your network (e.g. cable + DSL, and even 3G) and the MX will balance traffic between them. If one goes down it’ll simply move all traffic to the healthy connection. Turns out this approach can save cost too…

 

If you do suffer a WAN outage, there are a small hand-full of end-user facing features on our wireless products that are affected if your connection to the cloud is lost. These are all convenience features, most of which you don’t get with a traditional wireless LAN. If you like the convenience and can tollerate limited functionality in the rare event of a WAN outage, enjoy them! If you’d prefer that there is zero end-user impact if your WAN connection is interrupted, don’t enable them (and use the alternatives listed below instead.) Features that are impacted by WAN failures include:

• Native Active Directory/LDAP integration (without RADIUS)
  This is a handy feature that allows users to authenticate against your AD/LDAP server without running RADIUS. This is super-easy to configure, and is a feature that isn’t available with traditional solutions like Cisco.
  
  This feature does require connectivity to the cloud, so if you want to integrate with AD or LDAP but not require cloud connectivity, simply use a traditional RADIUS configuration:

Fault Tolerant AD/LDAP Authentication using RADIUS

• Meraki-hosted splash pages and captive portal
  Meraki hosts snazzy, mobile-friendly, and customizable splash pages that wireless users can click through (or sign on from) before accessing your network. Since these are hosted on Meraki’s servers, they are super-easy to deploy, without any additional infrastructure in your environment. Since they’re hosted by Meraki, they require WAN connectivity to function, but you can control how new user authentication will be handled in the event that you lose WAN connectivity:
  

  Controlling Splash Page Behavior in Disconnected Environment

• Built-in anti-virus scan (aka NAC)
  While Meraki’s LAN-isolation firewall always ensures that untrusted clients cannot spread viruses or compromise your LAN, Meraki offers an extra layer of protection by optionally scanning clients for antivirus software before allowing them onto the network. If a client isn’t protected, they are placed in a quarantine, from which they can download AV software but can’t access any other parts of the network. This feature is unique to Meraki – no other wireless systems, cloud-managed or otherwise, offer it. We find that for many customers, a full-blown, dedicated NAC system is overkill (lots of configuration complexity, 5-6 figure price tag) but Meraki’s built-in solution offers 1-click peace of mind.
  
  If you run Meraki’s NAC and lose WAN connectivity, you can choose how the network will behave: allow clients on without a scan, or block clients until WAN connectivity is restored. Clients already on the network will be unaffected, and other access control features remain in place (firewall rules, identity-based group policies, etc.) Most of our customers didn’t run NAC at all before they deployed Meraki, so rare interruptions aren’t a major issue. But if antivirus scans during WAN outages are mission-critical, we recommend a dedicated NAC appliance (also be sure to host a downloadable antivirus package behind the firewall, since users won’t be able to go out onto the network if they fail the scan.)
  
  
• Meraki-hosted RADIUS server
  Most enterprise (and even SMB) environments already have a RADIUS server – Microsoft Active Directory, LDAP, FreeRADIUS etc. The vast majority of our customers who use RADIUS authentication (i.e. 802.1x) authenticate against their own server, so that they have one central user database for email, calendaring, wireless LAN authentication, etc. However, Meraki also offers a cloud-hosted RADIUS server for lightweight use. This requires connectivity to Meraki, so if access during a WAN outage is mission-critical, those user accounts should reside on your internal directory server.

There’s a lot of detail about what is affected by loss of connectivity, but in the scheme of Meraki’s features, this is a short list. Our customers find in practice that Meraki’s out of band management significantly improves the reliability and resilience of their networks, combining the centralized management of controller-based systems with the fault-tolerance of a distributed architecture. If you’re already a customer, how has Meraki’s out-of-band architecture benefited your network? What else would you like to know about how Meraki works under the covers? Let us know!

The delegates who are coming:

Marcus Burton @MarcusBurton

http://www.cwnp.com

Sam Clements @Samuel_Clements

http://sc-wifi.com

Daniel Cybulskie @SimplyWifi

http://www.simplywifi.co

Rocky Gregory @BionicRocky

http://www.intensified.com

Tom Hollingsworth @NetworkingNerd

http://networkingnerd.net

Jennifer Huber @JenniferLucille

http://jenniferhuber.blogspot.com

Blake Krone @BlakeKrone

http://BlakeKrone.com

Chris Lyttle @WiFiKiwi

http://www.wifikiwi.com

Andrew vonNagy @RevolutionWiFi

http://revolutionwifi.blogspot.com

George Stefanick @WirelesssGuru

http://www.my80211.com

Stephen Foskett @SFoskett

Wireless Field Day’s organizer, from Gestalt IT

There are several ways you can join in online. Follow @TechFieldDay and @meraki for updates, and use the hashtag #WFD2 to participate on Twitter. We’ll also be showing the live video stream of the event right here on the blog. We look forward to meeting everyone, both in person and online!

• Meraki MS Cloud Managed Switches
• Meraki MX Cloud Managed Security Appliances

Together with our award-winning cloud managed wireless LAN, these products enable enterprises to deploy 100% cloud managed networks, adding visibility and control while eliminating the cost and complexity of traditional solutions.

Meraki MS Cloud Managed Switches

Meraki MS Cloud Managed Switches

We’re now bringing the ease of use, visibility, and control that made Meraki famous to the edge of the wired network. MS switches are centrally managed through the Meraki dashboard and include an industry-first technology called Virtual Stacking. This enables centralized management of up to thousands of ports regardless of the locations of the switches or the scale of deployment. Of course, the MS switches also support traditional stacking.

In addition to the excellent management tools and ease of use, we’ve built the switches from the ground up to support the high performance needs of the network edge. The switches feature a non-blocking Gigabit switching fabric, PoE available on all ports of the PoE models, and the MS42/MS42P support 10 Gb uplink for stacking and high speed core connectivity.

The Meraki MS Cloud Managed Switches are available in four models:

• MS22, MS22P: 24-port GbE switch with power over Ethernet (MS22P)
• MS42, MS42P: 48-port GbE switch with power over Ethernet (MS42P)

Learn more about the industry’s first cloud managed switches on our website.

Meraki MX Cloud Managed Security Appliances

Meraki MX Cloud Managed Security Appliances

As if an entirely new line of cloud managed switches wasn’t enough, we’re also expanding our line of MX Cloud Managed Security Appliances by adding WAN optimization and five new hardware models.

MX Security Appliances are now available in six models that scale from branches to campus and datacenter environments:

• MX60: Security appliances for small branch deployments
• MX80, MX90: 1U appliances for mid-sized branches
• MX400, MX600: Campus and datacenter-class appliances scaling to over ten thousands users, with 10 GbE connectivity and high availability features

WAN optimization

We’ve also added WAN optimization to the MX, allowing network administrators to dramatically reduce branch bandwidth consumption and accelerate application performance. Using a variety of technologies, intra-site bandwidth can be reduced by up to 99%. Applications such as Windows file sharing (CIFS), FTP, HTTP, and generic TCP-based applications can be accelerated up to 209X over un-optimized connections.

WAN optimization is configured and enabled with a single click in the dashboard, and it’s included at no additional charge in the MX Enterprise and Advanced Security licenses.

Cloud management for all parts of the network

Finally, it’s here: cloud managed networking for all parts of the network. Using Meraki wireless LAN, Gigabit switching and security appliances, it’s now possible to have unified, single pane-of-glass visibility and control of the entire cloud managed network.

In response to more “bring your own device” initiatives and the growing demand for mobility, Clayton explains:

• How Taft maintains security for the important information passing over the wireless network
• The need for scalability, ensuring that the wireless network can grow with the company and its increasing WiFi demand
• The seamless integration of the personal, private, and public cloud experiences in the workplace

Read Clayton’s article to see how Meraki can support mobile devices at your company.

Find ILTA’s current publication of Peer to Peer at: http://www.iltanet.org/MainMenuCategory/Publications/Peer-to-Peer