Archive for the ‘The Official Meraki Blog’ Category

New 802.11n APs – Higher performance, slimmer design, lower price

We are very excited to announce two new enterprise 802.11n access points: the Meraki MR12 and MR16. These new APs offer across the board upgrades over their predecessors, the venerable MR11 and MR14: improved performance, sleeker design, and even a lower price!
MR12/MR16

Meraki MR16 ($649)
Dual Concurrent 802.11n for Enterprise/Campus

Meraki MR12 ($399)
Single Radio 802.11n for Small Branch/Teleworker

These are the slimmest enterprise 802.11n APs.  Measuring in at under 1? thin, they blend seamlessly into their environment.


We built these APs with the network administrator in mind, making them as fast and easy as possible to deploy.  The  industrial design makes for easy, 1-handed mounting.  Each box contains a complete accessory kit, with gear for wall, drop ceiling, and desktop mounting.  No pre-configuration is required – just plug the AP in, and it automatically assumes gateway or mesh mode, and downloads its configuration from the cloud.



Despite its slim profile and lower price, the MR12 and MR16 are actually more powerful than their predecessors, featuring both increased transmit power and receive sensitivity. Highlights include:

Layer 7 Traffic Shaping
Line rate deep packet inspection engine for application QoS

High Capacity Design
Memory capacity for 100+  simultaneous users

Built-in Policy Firewall
Guest, User and Group Acces Control

4th Generation Chipset
Top of the line 2×2 MIMO with spectrum analyzer and transmit power control

Client Enhancements
Beamforming, Voice/Video QoS, Band steering

Enterprise Mesh
Self configuring, Automatic healing


To top it all off, these are green little APs, with 100% recyclable packaging, 90% recyclable components, and a multi-tenant cloud hosted controller that is far more energy efficient than traditional hardware controllers.

We’re incredibly excited about these APs, and the response we’ve received from our beta testers has been very encouraging. We hope that you like them too!

Red Alert!! Enhanced Dashboard Alerts Now Available

We are excited to announce that network administrators now have enhanced alerting capabilities in Dashboard to help them stay up to date with their wireless network.  Under Configure->Network-wide settings in the Network Alerts section you’ll see these expanded options:


Now you can select to receive prompt email alerts when an AP goes offline or switches from gateway to repeater mode, a new rogue AP is detected or configuration changes are made to your network settings in Dashboard.  You can also customize the time delay before you are notified as well as qualify the type of rogue APs for which you are alerted to so you’re not bombarded with low priority updates.  These alerts can be sent to multiple administrators via email.  The email alerts contain detailed information to help you determine the urgency of the situation, such as the AP that went offline or what configuration setting was changed.

In addition to the unprecedented visibility that is provided about your network through the Cloud via Dashboard’s reporting capabilities, these new alerts will now allow you to stay on top of your network even when not logged into Dashboard.  These alerts are one more tool in the administrator’s toolkit to make managing Meraki networks remotely even simpler and to enable you to be more responsive to your end users’ needs.  New alerts are now available to all Meraki customers.

TEDGlobal 2010: Wireless worth spreading

TEDGlobal 2010, themed “And Now the Good News”, wrapped up with some good news for Meraki and TEDGlobal attendees using the conference WiFi. As part of the British Telecom Sponsorship team, fellow Meraki engineer Robert Shanks and I were on site to deploy and support the wireless network for this 4-day conference. To make a long story short, the wireless network performed flawlessly, with just over a 1,000 people connecting throughout the conference and transferring over 250 gigabytes of data.

The conference venue, located in Oxford, UK, had its fiber backhaul brought in by BT. The backhaul was then distributed to wireless users in the two main venues of the conference, the Oxford Playhouse and the gala rooms of the Randolph Hotel, through fifteen MR14 dual-radio access points.

We leaned heavily on the Cloud Controller to quickly deploy the network with a small team. Rogue AP detection and automatic channel spreading maintained performance while TEDsters blogged, tweeted, browsed and streamed all at once. While we trusted the Cloud Controller’s real-time alerts to let us know about unexpected changes (there weren’t any), we also kept tabs on the network’s summary report, giving us a good understanding of the overall usage and performance of the network.

Along with performance and usage information, the summary reports confirmed that the device-of-choice for TEDsters was the iPad, with well over 100 using the network. In fact, hand-held devices accounted for over 50% of clients connecting to the network.

We had a great time at TED, and were happy to see the Meraki network being used so heavily.  Thanks to the team at British Telecom for including us!

WiFi at your event should just work

Meraki at SF BetaIt doesn’t matter how large or small the conference is, it seems like they always have WiFi problems. The networks are consistently slow, frequently fail, and usually require some arcane security measure that involve weirdly-small scraps of paper and bizarre usernames.

There’s no reason for WiFi to be this frustrating!

At Meraki, we’ve had some experience setting up WiFi at large events so we know it can be done, it’s just a matter of having the right equipment and a little know-how. We’ll give you both, for free.

We’ve started a new project to loan our enterprise-grade WiFi gear to smaller tech conferences, meetups, BarCamps, WordCamps, Tweetups, whathaveyou … for free. You provide the Internet connection, and we’ll provide a rock-solid WiFi connection. All we ask in return is that if you like our products, tell your friends, and if not, let us know how we can make them better.

We’ve just gotten started with this project, but so far, meetups like SF BetaWordCamp Boulder, and Hacks/Hackers NYC have had great experiences.

“One of the best decisions we made for our conference. Not only was the delivery and setup effortless, our network remained stable throughout the entire day. No matter your wireless needs, this experience alone tells me Meraki’s solutions are some of the best.” —WordCamp Boulder

As part of this project, we’re excited to be partnering with WordCamp.org. We’ll offer a streamlined signup process for the many BarCamp-style events that these organizations sponsor throughout the year.

If you run an event and would like to participate in our new Free Event WiFi project, we’d love it if you signed up! We’re looking for small to medium-sized events that have enough bandwidth to support that group.

If you’re interested, head on over to the signup page to learn more or take a look at our plug-and-play setup guide, or ask any questions below!

Who is on your Network RIGHT NOW? Introducing Live Client Tools

One of the most challenging aspects of managing large distributed networks is troubleshooting issues when the client is across town (or maybe even across the country!).  Having on-site IT personnel 24/7 at even small satellite branch offices can require a very large IT staff and is too expensive for most organizations.  Meraki networks offer a variety of “remote hands” troubleshooting tools, helping network admins diagnose and resolve many wireless connectivity issues without dispatching IT staff to the site.  The ability to run diagnostic checks such as pinging an access point, running a throughput test from Dashboard, or reviewing detailed event logs have been integral to Meraki’s value for distributed networks and organizations with small IT staffs and large footprints.

We are now announcing a set of Live Client Tools that expose even more up-to-the-second information about who is on a wireless network, and further help troubleshoot connectivity issues.  Administrators who log into their Enterprise network in Dashboard will notice several new and improved areas.  On the Monitor > Overview page, there is now a new addition under the network name showing the number of clients that are associated at that moment:

If you click on the “More” link, you will see an expanded list with more information, including which SSIDs and channels the clients are using.  This data is automatically refreshed as long as the “More” link is expanded.

Even cooler, Enterprise customers can change the access points map to show where clients are associated: click the “Options” menu on the map and select “Current clients.”

But the really interesting stuff is on the Access Point and Client detail pages.  The Access Point detail page used to look like this:

Now, all of the live tools have been consolidated into a new, cleaner layout.  Both Pro and Enterprise networks will benefit from the new layout.  Enterprise networks now have two additional features in this area: Current Clients and Ping Client MAC.  Clicking on the play icon next to Current Clients will pop up a list of all clients associated to that AP at that instant, including useful information about each client such as MAC, SSID, channel, signal strength, and how long they have been associated.  Click on the name of a client to go to its client details page.  You’ll even see clients that have associated, but not authenticated (they’re listed in grey).  If you click the Ping link next to the client, you can actually ping that client in real time using ARP, as well as get additional information, such as RSSI changes over time and 802.1X identity (if appropriate).

The other new addition, Ping Client MAC, allows you to enter a MAC address and try to ping it.  This can be very useful if you are trying to determine if a particular device is on your network at that moment.

There is also a new Live Tools section on the client detail page.  From this page you can also ping that individual client, but there are a few additional new tools:

The Locate Client tool allows you to find out whether that client is associated on your network at that moment, and if so, where they’re associated and for how long:

Finally, the Packet Counter tool shows a real-time count of received and sent packets to that client.  You can actually see the packet counters roll as you ping the client!

We think these new tools further improve Meraki’s uniquely clear approach to distributed, multi-site network management, a normally challenging task.  Network administrators can more quickly resolve their wireless users’ connectivity issues and access accurate real-time data about the exact state of their network.

Get a Bird’s Eye View of All Your Networks with the All-Network Overview Page

Meraki’s cloud-based architecture makes it an ideal choice for distributed, multi-site systems of networks, with administrators able to manage up to 1,000 networks from a single web browser using Dashboard. We’ve recently added a feature that makes it even easier to visualize and manage geographically distributed networks. Users who have logged into Dashboard in the last day may have noticed a new link above the network name on the Monitor > Overview page:

The link is the name of the organization that contains the network. (The network selector at the top of the page groups your networks by organization. Many of our network administrators have just one organization, but it’s not uncommon to have more — one for Enterprise networks and one for Pro networks, for example.) Clicking on this link will take you to a new page, the All-Network Overview page:

This displays all of an organization’s networks on single map. These networks are listed at the top of the screen, along with color coded markers so that each network can be easily located on the map below. The usage graph displays cumulative usage across all listed networks. If you mouse over a particular network name, that network’s usage is highlighted on the usage graph, and its network markers are highlighted on the map below.

Jump to a network’s overview page by clicking its name, or jump to a particular access point in any of your networks by double-clicking its marker. If you’d like to see all your networks’ access points color-coded by status, that’s easy too: just uncheck “Color by network” on the map’s Options menu.

You can also get to the All-Network Overview page by choosing “All-network overview” from the network selector:

The All-Network Overview page is available today to all Meraki network administrators with two or more networks. This is a great tool to assist with managing large, multi-site deployments and we are very excited about this new addition to Dashboard.

SpeedBurst: Faster browsing for guest networks

Meraki administrators utilizing per-user bandwidth limitations now have a new tool at their disposal to ensure that their wireless users have the best possible experience while preventing any one user from hogging bandwidth.  Introducing SpeedBurst, a new feature that allows users to temporarily exceed their bandwidth limit at the beginning of a download while staying within assigned limits over time.  This makes downloads feel speedier and network performance snappier.

You can enable SpeedBurst by using the checkbox that can be found under Configure -> Access Control in the Bandwidth Limit section (see screenshot below).  The checkbox will be grayed out if bandwidth limits are not in use.

SpeedBurst is a great for guest access or event networks where end user experience is critical while at the same time equal network performance for all users is required.  We’ll be rolling out SpeedBurst to Enterprise and Pro Meraki networks starting today.