It’s that time of year again! With E-Rate season ramping up, the folks here at Meraki wanted to remind all of our K–12 and library customers about some education-centric features our suite of products can offer you. Find out about useful features and read a short case study featuring Milpitas Unified School District by downloading the Meraki for K–12 solution guide.

You’ll learn about:

Deep network visibility
Layer 7 visibility and management for fine-grained control over how the network bandwidth is used.

Bulletproof security
Six complex devices built into one, easy-to-use security appliance: branch router, firewall, site-to-site VPN, content filter, load balancer, and intrusion prevention.

High-density support
Automatically optimizes and delivers superior performance in high-density wireless environments under intense interference conditions.

BYOD and 1:1
Establish mobility management rules, bandwidth limits, device-aware access policies, and firewall rules to ensure appropriate network use.

Live troubleshooting
Ethernet cable testing, event logs, and live packet captures right from the dashboard.

Mobility management
Systems Manager is the only solution that provides unified management of mobile devices, Macs, PCs, and the entire network from a centralized dashboard. Automate device onboarding, deploy apps, and enforce security restrictions easily.

Want these features in your school? Reach out to your Meraki representative to find out more or register for a no-strings attached trial.

P.S. All Meraki hardware and most licenses are 100% eligible for E-Rate funding* and with our current E-Rate promotion, you can take advantage of the following at an incredible price.

*MX Advanced Security Licenses are 50% eligible, SM Licenses, MC Hardware & Licenses, and MV Hardware & Licenses are not E-Rate eligible per Funding Year 2016 eligible services list.

A couple of weeks ago we announced our upcoming support for Fast Lane features, which improve the WiFi and application performance experience for users of iOS10. These new capabilities are the culmination of joint development between Apple and Cisco as part of the partnership we announced last summer, and are delivered via our MR access points and Systems Manager mobility management.

Today we’re happy to announce the release of related documentation, and the opening of these exciting new features to our MR beta customers.

Click the links to read the details:

Roaming Technologies

QoS and Fast Lane

Power Saving Techniques

If the documentation has whet the appetite to take the features for a spin, please contact our support team, who’ll be more than happy to enable the beta on your network.

We’ve all experienced it. Choppy, distorted or delayed voice are an unfortunate by-product of sending the human voice across digital networks over which we have limited or no control. Thankfully, technology has helped squeeze the best possible experience out of VoIP with more efficient codecs and, traffic prioritization. Our goal as network engineers is to maximize Quality of Experience (QoE) and minimize Number of Tickets, so we need all the tools we can get to assist.

The Meraki switching and AP families provides the perfect backbone on which to run VoIP, including our very own MC74 cloud managed phone, supporting 802.1p, DSCP and WMM. For site-to-site connections, even across the Internet, we provide SD-WAN functionality to automatically ensure selection of the best forwarding path for VoIP traffic.

Today we want to share three new capabilities specific to the MC74 which will help admins identify and troubleshoot VoIP issues.

The first of these is a dream come true for troubleshooters. Every call made on an MC74 is recorded in the Call Log, and now simply clicking on any call in that log will show its stats. Here’s an example, which clearly illustrates the loss and jitter for the duration of this call:

Meraki customers have benefitted from the ability to run remote packet captures for years: one of the most powerful troubleshooting tools in our kitbag. Now these packet captures can be grabbed directly from a Meraki phone. Perfect for those customers who have not yet upgraded to a full Meraki network.

Finally, for in-flight call issues, the phone user can be notified if network issues are impacting voice quality: useful because a less technical user may not be familiar with the issues which can impact Quality of Experience, and can then draw issues to the attention of the IT team.

A notice pops up on the screen, and the connectivity indicator in the upper left of the phone’s display will blink yellow.

Little by little, the Meraki phone is developing like every great Meraki product does, in response to the valuable feedback we receive daily from our customers. Our engineers are hard at work on more new features for MC, and we’ll be back to share those just as soon as they’re ready. In the meantime, please continue to contribute your ideas on how we can evolve this into the most user-friendly phone with the lowest operational costs on the market.

Of the many powerful pages available throughout the Meraki Dashboard, the switch monitor view is unsurprisingly one of the most heavily used by our customers. It provides rich detail and visibility of the overall health of a Meraki switch, along with historical information and a collection of useful monitoring and troubleshooting tools.

Based on feedback from thousands of our users, the Meraki engineering and user experience teams took a fresh approach to designing this page for all our products, with a focus on usability and speed. Available starting today, Meraki switch networks will have this brand new interface, with an option to go back if needed.

Here is a preview of the new design

Finding the cause of network trouble is now easier than ever, with a quick loading, intuitive and mobile-friendly interface built on React, making it more versatile than ever. See this example of a customer using the new page to remotely troubleshoot why a switch is having trouble contacting the network gateway:

Next time you login to a Meraki switch network, browse to Monitor > Switches and you’ll be greeted with the new page, accompanied with an option to View [the] old version. As always, please send us your thoughts and feedback so we can continue to enhance the new look. You can do this by choosing to go back to the old view, at which point you’ll be prompted for your feedback. We look forward to hearing from you!

High-density is the new black. As we increasingly use  mobile devices to access the internet and other data, the pressure put on existing wireless infrastructure mounts. More people trying to access wireless networks with more devices means more radio frequency (RF) congestion — especially in situations where large gatherings of people occur. We expect connectivity at events, venues, and stadiums — and, in fact, these sites are looking to deploy wireless networks to improve their visitors’ experience with services like e-ticketing, interactive kiosks, targeted advertising, etc.

Additionally, an increasing number of deployments you wouldn’t necessarily have labelled “high-density” (e.g. multi-floor college dormitories) now face similar challenges as networks designed to serve large crowds. High-density is becoming de rigueur.

That’s why we’re thrilled to announce the launch of our latest wireless access point: the Cisco Meraki MR84, designed to make deploying high-density wireless networks easy — even in harsh conditions.*

The new MR84.

Sporting the market’s most advanced 802.11ac Wave 2 chipset, the MR84 provides the highest client density support with a 4×4:4-stream MU-MIMO 160MHz architecture; a blazingly fast, multigigabit uplink for heavy data loads; and a slew of crowd-friendly features that reduce RF congestion and improve throughput and roaming.

We’re also excited to announce that the MR84 is certified to work with one of the best 4×4, dual-band, MIMO antennas on the market: the Cisco “Gillaroo” antenna, also known as Cisco Four-Port Dual-Band Polarization-Diverse Array Antenna (AIR-ANT2513P4M-N=). This antenna is designed for stadiums and arenas, and provides a narrow 30o  beam of coverage.

The MR84 and Cisco’s AIR-ANT2513P4M-N= antenna pair perfectly for high-density deployments.

Availability

 
The MR84, along with the Cisco AIR-ANT2513P4M-N= antenna and a new, dual-band sector antenna — the MA-ANT-27 — are orderable and available to ship today in countries supporting the regulatory certifications of:

• The United States
• The European Union
• Canada
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Japan

Making high-density easy

 
Thanks to Meraki’s cloud management, it’s incredibly easy to remotely pre-configure, deploy, and manage wireless networks and MR access points (along with all other Meraki products) from any internet-accessible device. With respect to high-density deployments, Meraki APs come with many handy features to help reduce RF interference and improve roaming. The Meraki solution gives you the ability to easily:

• Steer clients to faster, less congested 5GHz channels and improve roaming performance by setting minimum bit rates

• Enable a seamless wireless experience across an entire venue with Layer 3 roaming

• Quickly deploy baseline configurations and security across tens, hundreds, or even thousands of APs with network templates

• Rapidly expand wireless connectivity to remote “dead zone” areas with zero-touch, automatic AP meshing

• Reduce RF interference in congested areas with a dedicated scanning radio that proactively tunes to optimize performance

• Improve overall wireless performance with selective SSID and band enablement

• Allow groups to receive different security postures and network access across one SSID thanks to Cisco ISE integration (with CoA)

• Control which applications consume bandwidth via powerful application traffic shaping

• Leverage integrated location analytics on every AP for better service and branding

In the wild: the Barclaycard Center

 
Meraki MR84 access points are being deployed in one of Madrid’s premier indoor stadiums: the Barclaycard Center (Palacio de Deportes). Used for basketball games, concerts, and other large events, the Barclaycard Center can host up to 15,500 visitors for a single event.

About 150 Meraki APs have been deployed at Madrid’s Barclaycard Center stadium to date.

As part of an ongoing rollout, about 150 Meraki access points have been deployed across the stadium to date — along with Cisco AIR-ANT2513P4M-N= antennas — and are able to successfully serve 6,000 clients. Many of the features listed in the section above have been deployed to mitigate RF congestion and interference, and provide an optimal wireless experience for Barclaycard Center guests.

For more information

 
Without a doubt, the MR84 loves a crowd — and we are thrilled to introduce it to you. As with all Meraki gear, you can take this AP for a test drive in your own environment via a risk-free trial or give us a call with any questions you may have.

We have additional information posted on the MR84 product page and in the MR84 data sheet.

As always, we’d love to get your thoughts and feedback on these new products and encourage you to reach out to us on social media or to make a wish in the Meraki dashboard!

* The MR84 is IP67-rated for total dust ingress protection and protection from water immersion between 15cm and 1m in depth.

To continue with Cisco Meraki’s mission of simplifying IT through intuitive cloud-managed products, we’re thrilled to announce the launch of an entirely new product line, MV Security Cameras, as well as the debut of our newest wireless access point designed for tough, high-density deployments, the MR84.  These new products are the latest in a long line of Meraki devices which can all be easily monitored and controlled from a single web-based dashboard.

Meraki MV Security Cameras

This brand new Meraki product family delivers a simplified design for streamlined deployment and is the only video security solution from an industry cloud leader. In true Meraki fashion, we’ve eliminated the need to purchase additional on-premise hardware, external recording devices, or standalone software packages. We’re able to do this through cutting edge architecture that uses industrial grade, solid state storage on each camera to store weeks’ worth of video while simultaneously enabling easy configuration and management from the cloud.

There are two camera models: one designed for indoors (the MV21) and one for harsh, outdoor use (the MV71, which is IK10 rated).

The new Meraki MV21 security camera.

Meraki MR84 Access Point

Built from the ground up with high-density deployments in mind, the MR84 is our most performance-driven AP designed for both demanding indoor or harsh outdoor conditions. Sporting the market’s most advanced 802.11ac Wave 2 4×4:4 MU-MIMO architecture and a multigigabit uplink, the MR84 is designed to serve multiple concurrent clients during heavy usage.

The MR84 is the first Meraki AP to be certified for use with one of the best 4×4, dual-band, MIMO antennas on the market: the Cisco “Gillaroo” antenna, also known as Cisco Four-Port Dual-Band Polarization-Diverse Array Antenna (AIR-ANT2513P4M-N=). This antenna is designed for stadiums and arenas, and provides a narrow 30o  beam of coverage.

Stay tuned!

We will be publishing additional blog posts diving into more detail on both the MV line and the MR84 throughout this week. Additionally, we will be hosting informative customer webinars on both products that will feature a live MV product demo beginning September 20th.

As always, we appreciate your feedback and would love to hear your thoughts. Please don’t hesitate to drop us a line on social media or to give us a call or make a wish in the Meraki dashboard!

Twelve months ago Cisco and Apple announced an exciting new partnership to fast-track the mobile enterprise. In the intervening period much work has gone on behind the scenes, preparing for some true breakthroughs in user experience when operating Apple devices running iOS 10 on a Cisco wireless network. Naturally, Meraki technology is along for the ride, and the fruits of our labor are now ready to share.

Ever since we all started carrying mobile devices around, network admins have faced a number of challenges. Some of these relate to the physical environment and can be mitigated with a professional site survey to establish the correct number and placement of APs. Other challenges relate more to the mobile devices joining these Wi-Fi networks: our smartphones, tablets, and so on.

Two client challenges which stand out are roaming and app prioritization, and these just happen to be two of the areas which Cisco, including Meraki, is addressing for iPhone and iPad running iOS 10. Let’s break this down and look at the two in turn.

Roaming

As a mobile device moves through the Wi-Fi environment, and the distance from its connected AP increases, the device must roam to maintain connection to the network. This roaming process requires the client to find another AP serving the same SSID and then go through the process of establishing a new association by performing a handshake with the new AP. With classic roaming, the onus is on the client to initiate the roam. The method for doing so is not part of the 802.11 standard and varies between device manufacturers, so inevitably problems can arise if a certain client’s roaming method is incompatible with the AP’s own method. Additionally, in a secure environment where clients are required to authenticate, the complete authentication process must be performed at each roam.

The challenge is that both of these processes – the re-association and re-authentication – introduce delay, potentially impacting the user experience. To address these, three extensions were added to the 802.11 standard: 802.11k, v and r, each of which are implemented on Meraki APs.

802.11k

Rather than having to blindly establish available APs through active scanning at the time of roaming, client devices request a neighbor list from the AP to which they’re associated. This list, which may vary for each client, based on its location, includes APs offering the same SSID, and the channel they’re serving that SSID on. At the time of roaming, the client can reach out directly to APs on the list, reducing re-association time.

802.11v

Our first enhancement for Meraki APs is the addition of support for 802.11v, which builds on ‘k’ by advising the client of the best AP to roam to, based on load. Apple devices running iOS 10 are able to recognize ‘v’ and will therefore benefit from this additional information, ensuring a better spread of load across APs and an improved overall experience for clients.

802.11r

With 802.11r, the re-authentication of clients is greatly accelerated by sharing encryption keys between APs, streamlining handoff between them. Both 802.11k and ‘r’ have been available on Meraki APs for some time. There is just one caveat relating to ‘r’ which has prevented its widespread adoption: device compatibility. Not all clients support the standard, so we’ve always provided a toggle switch to turn it off when compatibility issues arise. This toggle switch is a blunt tool, an ‘all or nothing’. So one of the most significant enhancements we’re announcing for Meraki customers is a new approach known as ‘adaptive 802.11r’, which enables the latest iOS devices running iOS 10 to automatically use ‘802.11r’ when connected to our APs, regardless of the toggle switch setting. This will enable a superior performance for Apple devices, even in a mixed device environment.

With 802.11r, only one authorization request is made to the server, then shared between APs

App Prioritization

Some of the apps we run on our devices are more demanding and require priority for their traffic as it traverses the network. Mostly we’re thinking here of more latency-sensitive apps, like voice and video. Quality of Service (QoS) provides the tools we need to prioritize once the data hits the network infrastructure, but how do we manage the flow of traffic between the device and the network?

Introducing Fast Lane integration with Systems Manager profiles

Wireless MultiMedia (WMM) provides a mechanism for prioritizing application traffic on the wireless network. Meraki APs already have the ability to mark wireless traffic for QoS treatment based on Layer 7 traffic analysis. In addition, Apple enables developers to request prioritization at the app level, which maps to WMM at the device level so that traffic is given priority on the upstream to the AP. All other app traffic is sent as Best Effort, as with other forms of QoS.

Fast lane with Systems Manager for controlled app prioritization

Meraki APs honor all incoming WMM markings from iOS (what is commonly referred to as fast lane). However it may be desirable for the IT administrator to limit which apps are given permission to set these markings according to device policy or posture, to prevent abuse, or to engineer the network for better performance. We call this per-app QoS, and it’s a new feature in the Wi-Fi Profiles section of Meraki Systems Manager.

The decision to honor markings for specific apps could be based on policy rules such as a schedule, a geofence, the user’s identity or Active Directory group. Device posture can also be interrogated, checking for the presence of a passcode or whether the device has been compromised through jailbreaking, before adhering to app prioritization markings.

Taken together, these innovations by Cisco and Apple, including new capabilities on Meraki APs and Systems Manager, offer a real difference for devices running iOS 10. We’re proud of the work of our engineers who helped make this a reality for Cisco customers around the world and can’t wait to see its impact on the iOS experience. For another perspective, including how Cisco Spark is delivering an integrated calling experience on iOS 10, check out the partnership page on Cisco.com here, or this page on Apple’s website. Existing Meraki AP and Systems Manager customers will be able to test these new features later this month. Alternatively, for an introduction to Meraki, simply join us on one of our regular webinars.