Posts Tagged ‘meraki’

Accelerating Your Wireless WAN rollout with Meraki Dashboard API

In adopting digital transformation, businesses increasingly rely on connecting cloud-specific services. The ongoing pandemic has necessitated, and in many cases, speed this adoption. By leveraging technology, businesses are likely to continue looking for ways to improve efficiency, and reduce costs, as they navigate these difficult times. 

Cisco Meraki Cellular Gateway (MG) is built to address the growing demand for operational reliability and business continuity across industries. MG allows for better performance, quick provisioning, high availability, and redundancy in providing cellular wireless WAN connectivity to geographically dispersed networks. 

As businesses are starting to take advantage of the advancements in cellular technology, we’re empowering them to be scalable. The shift towards the distributed application model, workforces, and software-defined technologies is leading to the increased need for API access to the network. The good news is that MG can be configured and managed using the Meraki Dashboard API

What can the Meraki API do for your cellular WAN connectivity?

Through automation and integrations, the Meraki Dashboard API for MG enables scale, growth, and future-proofing. 

Automation 

IT teams can add new organizations, administrators, cellular networks, and MG devices across thousands of locations in minutes with an automation script. By automating network provisioning and bulk configurations, IT teams can minimize manual and routine tasks, freeing up time to work on more important things such as optimizing for better performance or developing modern apps. The Meraki Dashboard API also offers flexibility in cloning sites or developing templates to help you get MGs deployed easily.

Screenshot of Cisco Devnet

Much of configuration-related set up such as DHCP, LAN, port forwarding rules, subnet pool, and uplink settings, entails repetitive tasks and is prone to human error. Network administrators spend a lot of time on these repetitive configuration and monitoring tasks that can be automated and made error-free using APIs. With MG, customers can do so via APIs to avoid manual error and service downtime—significantly reducing the management workload. 

With the Meraki Dashboard API, one of our retail customers was able to rapidly automate deployment and provisioning at more than 2000 distributed locations nationwide. The resulting streamlined operations reduced overhead and costs for them. 

Integration and future-proofing

The potential of the Meraki Dashboard API goes beyond faster, seamless, and cost-effective automation. Meraki API services are easy to use, easy to train staff to program with, and ripe for technology partners to continue to build native integrations on top of. For growing businesses, using these API services can significantly increase speed-to-market. 

The Cisco Meraki Dashboard API is a RESTful API that uses HTTPS requests to a URL and JSON as a human-readable format. So, what does this mean for our customers? This higher software programmability using structured network data makes it easier to integrate with business logic systems. When building APIs, they can choose from a larger pool of skilled resources. Businesses can build their dashboard for store managers or specific use cases, allowing them to quickly add new services. 

Visibility

Lack of end-to-end visibility is problematic when troubleshooting network issues such as high latency and jitter. By monitoring the cellular connectivity and signal strength of MG devices through APIs, IT teams can save hours of troubleshooting. Meraki APIs make our platform extensible and allow you to be agile in responding to quickly changing business needs. Meraki offers a comprehensive platform that complements out-of-the-box management and analytics for Wireless WAN deployments with the integrations and solutions powered by Meraki APIs. 

The access to the Meraki Dashboard API for MG, your cloud-managed cellular solution, is available at no additional cost. 

Experience the Meraki Cellular Gateway in action with a  free trial and check out the Cisco Meraki Developer Hub to preview API options, today. 

See More of What You Want with MV

Hot on the heels of the recent product release, we have two more features to share. These latest features are designed to give users more of what they want – more detail in snapshots, and more video retention by increasing the relevancy of motion-based retention. We’re doing this by enabling full sensor resolution snapshots via the API, and by adding regions-of-interest to the motion-based retention tool. 

Full Sensor Resolution Snapshots

If you have used the Sensor Crop feature on MV12 series, MV22, or MV72 models, then you may already be aware that the cameras capture raw video at the full sensor resolution (4MP or 2688×1520) before downscaling the video to 1080p or 720p resolution for streaming and storage. Now, users can take “full-frame” snapshots using the Snapshot API. The resulting snapshot will have a 4MP resolution, regardless of the configured video quality settings.

The additional detail in the full resolution snapshot can be helpful for identification, or improving the accuracy of results returned by third-party computer vision services. It’s important to note that full frame snapshots are only available via the API on live video; snapshots on historical video are only available at the configured video recording quality. This feature is available on all second generation cameras running the MV 4.2 beta firmware. 

Fine-Tune Motion Based Retention with Areas of Interest

Our next feature is designed to make Motion-based retention more intelligent. When Motion-based retention was first released in 2017, it offered users a way to dramatically increase the retention of video stored on the camera. With Motion-based retention enabled, the camera retains the most recent 72 hours of continuous video, after which time it trims footage that contains no motion. The original Motion-based retention eliminated the majority of “empty” footage for most users, but what about instances where the camera detects near constant motion in part of the frame, from a spinning ceiling fan or always-on displays? Adding regions of interest — an option already available for Motion Alerts — allows users to specify where they care about motion, say at an entrance or exit. Motion that occurs in other areas of the scene will be discarded for the purposes of Motion-based retention. 

Screenshot of security camera footage, enable area of interest

To add an area of interest, navigate to the camera, then settings, and quality and retention. Once Motion-based retention is enabled, click and drag on the video frame to select your desired regions of interest. Multiple areas can be selected to allow for fine-tuning. Once set, only footage that contains motion within the selected area of interest will be retained after 72 hours when Motion-based retention is enabled.

Interested in learning more about video retention, snapshots or MV smart cameras? See our documentation for more information on video retention, or the Meraki Devnet site for more information on our APIs. Check out an upcoming webinar for an overview of our MV smart camera line. Let us know what you think about the new features on the Meraki Community page. 

Cellular Insights: More Power To You

Organizations across industries are eager to build their Wireless WAN infrastructure on the Meraki platform and some of them already have a head start with our new product line –  MG Cellular Gateway. MG provides a solution for optimal cellular signal strength. It gives our customers the flexibility of pairing MG with any Meraki or Cisco ISR/vEdge router or 3rd party router to provide another uplink for SD-WAN, or as a failover or primary link. 

MG was only launched a couple of months ago and we’re already releasing new features. There is no better way to see these features in action than to try it out for yourself

Quick network diagnosis 

We’re always seeking to provide capabilities that truly add value to our customer’s business. For cellular troubleshooting, customers have frequently told us how challenging it can get without any visibility into the signal characteristics at their site. This lack of control leads to them taking a hit on business functions that rely on cellular signals. 

MG users can now take advantage of this data within the Meraki platform to quickly diagnose what’s affecting cellular connectivity, or what led to performance degradation, through historical stats— signal strength, latency, and loss—that are visual and easy to interpret. By knowing how cellular connectivity is at certain sites at any given time, it’s simple to get to the root cause of network issues. Easy monitoring of live data along with the signal level, signal quality, and connectivity data could potentially save hours of troubleshooting. 

It gets even better with an API-driven architecture. MG can be managed completely through APIs, giving customers the flexibility of custom reporting and integrations that they need. Stay tuned for more updates!

Laptop showing Meraki dashboard historical data

How to access

From your Meraki dashboard, go to Monitor->Cellular gateways; select the MG for which you’d like to get the health data, and then go to Uplink from the menu bar. Scroll below to view the historical and connectivity data as far as 30 days in the past. 

MG Cellular Monitoring

Test out the new capabilities for yourself.  To learn more about the MG Cellular Gateway, you can refer to these additional MG resources: 

Introductory Blog

Features

Datasheets

Free trial

MG CELLULAR GATEWAY ORDERABLE TODAY

Last month at Cisco Partner Summit, we announced the newest addition to the Meraki platformthe MG Cellular Gateway. The reaction to MG has been overwhelming with customers and partners eagerly waiting to get their hands on it, and now, the wait is over. We’re pleased to announce that MG is officially orderable today – try it out for yourself.

If you’re hearing about MG for the first time, then read on…

What is it?
The MG Cellular Gateway is a brand new Meraki product line that takes a cellular signal and transforms it into a wired Ethernet connection that can then be propagated down to the rest of a network via a router.

Cellular is growing
Cellular usage as a viable enterprise-grade connectivity option has been steadily growing with advances in throughput and availability in particular. IDC estimates the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the global LTE gateway market to be approximately 25% with around half of all enterprises using cellular as their current backup network solution for WAN connectivity.

The Meraki MG Cellular Gateway is our second wave of investment into cellular products. Last year we introduced a range of small branch MX security & SD-WAN appliances with integrated LTE modems to deliver all-in-one cellular failover capability. Customer response to the embedded cellular range has made those models one of the most popular of the MX line over the past year.

So there’s obvious an appetite in cellular products, but in what scenario would an MG cellular gateway be useful?

Cellular signal strength
One of the biggest challenges with utilizing cellular connectivity is getting the signal itself to where it’s needed. For most enterprises, geographical cellular coverage is not the issue. The challenge is usually with signal strength where the networking equipment is located. More often than not, this tends to be a network closet or server room deep inside a building, where cellular reception is likely to be poor or sporadic at best.

Antennas from cellular devices in a closet or server room can be extended to a location with better signal using a coaxial cable, however this is only practical over short distances. Coaxial cables are susceptible to high signal loss, making them unsuitable to transport a cellular signal over all but short distances.

Meraki MG cellular gateways are IP67 rated, meaning they can be optimally positioned, indoors or outdoors, to receive maximum signal strength. Cellular signal from MGs is delivered to the rest of the network via an Ethernet cable which experiences zero signal loss even over larger distances. Ethernet delivery also means that MG can be paired with any router on the market downstream to provide another uplink for SD-WAN or as a failover/primary link.

As you would expect with a Meraki product, MG is supremely simple, and of course managed from the same dashboard as the rest of the Meraki portfolio.

A decade head start
MG is built on the industry’s most trusted cloud infrastructure, backed by over 10 years of experience supporting nearly half a million customers globally, including numerous deployments in excess of 20,000 locations. Leveraging this backend infrastructure means that Meraki is uniquely positioned to rapidly bring new products and product lines to market that are supremely scalable and robust, from day one.

What about 5G?
There’s a lot of hype and excitement around 5G, and rightly so. Compared to 4G, 5G promises

  • 10x latency reduction
  • 10x increase in connection density
  • 100x more traffic capacity

As hugely exciting as these capabilities are, there’s still some time before they become a reality. Firstly the 5G standard itself needs to be ratified – the timing of which is still to be confirmed. Moreover, as was the case with the preceding generations of cellular technology, multiple elements need to be completed before 5G adoption can become widespread: carriers need to certify 5G with their respective infrastructure and roll out new equipment to provide coverage, and client devices compatible with 5G need to proliferate.

Given the backend that Meraki has built, we’ve always been among the first to bring the latest technology innovations to our customers as we did with 802.11ac waves 1 and 2, and most recently, Wi-Fi 6. 5G will be no different. We’re closely tracking the progress of 5G, and are ideally positioned to deliver a solution to our customers that will allow them to fully leverage the enhancements in latency and throughput efficiencies that it promises, at scale.

So whether you’re starting your Meraki journey with MG or continuing it with adding to your existing Meraki deployment, you’re investing in a proven platform that’s ready to offer you unprecedented visibility and management, today.

More MG info & resources

Cisco and Meraki: Adapting for the Continuously Evolving Enterprise

Security is a top priority for people in IT. Everyone knows how important security is to an organization, its devices, and most significantly, its people. 

While putting a firewall in your network is the first line of defense, another primary foundation to network security is the enforcement of access security policies. Permitting or denying access to specific resources establishes security in your network. For example, guests should not be able to access business servers. Organizations can have long lists of access policies, dictating who can access what. But how many organizations have a clear and concise policy list they easily understand, manage, and configure?

Access control lists are daunting in most environments. This is due to how access policies are built. Access policies are based on an IP architecture, where sources and destinations are defined by your network topology. While this works, IP-based access policies do not easily scale with large scale environments, businesses with distributed sites, and frequently changing organizations. 

Most are familiar with policy lists that look something like this:

 

 

Would you be able to tell what these IP addresses represent? Is XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX your cloud server? Or the HR team? 

The point is, it’s difficult to tell. It also becomes more troublesome as your business needs change, such as a growing business dealing with company acquisitions, a university expanding their campus with new sites, or a firm that’s redesigning their entire organizational structure. In every one of these cases, access policies must be re-configured to mirror the way the network topology changes. 

What if access policies no longer needed to be dependent on network topology; no longer IP-based, and instead, based on the intent of the user, device, or service? 

Today’s the day – we’re introducing Adaptive Policy. 

*(Beta available H1CY2020)

 

Adaptive Policy is a new solution where revolutionary Cisco Security Group Tag (SGT) technology meets the most powerful Cisco Meraki switch hardware yet. This software feature addresses the shortcomings of traditional policy administration using Cisco SGT and the MS390. With Cisco SGT, numerical tags are used to profile users, devices, services, and time of access. Tags can be assigned using a RADIUS server like Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE). When Cisco ISE is used, the tag is transmitted to all devices in the network — every packet is tagged and decisions based on the tag are made by the MS390

 

How does Adaptive Policy actually work?

 

IT team creates an access policy whereby the sales team cannot access a product roadmap application. 

When a salesperson connects their laptop to the network, Cisco ISE will authenticate the user using Active Directory, then assign a tag, let’s pretend, tag 4 for the salesperson. The MS390 will receive tag 4 sent from ISE and will then add the tag 4 to every packet coming the salesperson’s device. If the salesperson tries to connect to the product roadmap server, which only allows tag 5, the MS390 will deny the request. But let’s say the salesperson moves to the product team, the user profile changes based on Active Directory, and now this user can access the roadmap application without having to re-configure all the switches in the network. 

This policy enforcement process has become scalable, effective, and automatic. Adaptive Policy utilizes Cisco SGT to determine traffic intent and can help scale and reinforce security for customers of any deployment size. 

With Adaptive Policy, security is agnostic to network topology, making security orchestration and mass configuration changes consistent. Furthermore, instead of using IP addresses, we can now use natural language to determine how a policy is adjusted and implemented. Instead of seeing XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX, you’ll find yourself reading “Marketing team”. 

 

Adaptive Policy is built with flexibility. 

 

Adaptive Policy is a new feature built with a Meraki API-first strategy that will guarantee full consumption. Together with Cisco, we are able to provide interoperability with an open implementation of tagging, which means it won’t be tied to only one vendor. Thanks to Cisco SGT’s open and extensible technology, Adaptive Policy provides maximum potential across Cisco and 3rd party vendors, giving you flexibility for your networking needs. 

MR customers can take advantage of Adaptive Policy too!

 

Customers who have Meraki MR access points (ac Wave 2 and above) but do not have the MS390 can still deploy Adaptive Policy. Under a hybrid environment, current Cisco Catalyst switch (3K to 9K series) customers with Meraki MR can implement Adaptive Policy utilizing inline-SGTs.

How can I enable Adaptive Policy?

Adaptive Policy is available as an advanced feature on the MS390. You will need the MS390 switch along with the MS390 Advanced licensing to enable this new feature. 

To learn more about Adaptive Policy and the MS390 switch, watch the launch webinar or read the MS390 blog. Starting early 2020, you can also give Adaptive Policy a whirl by starting a free trial.

Additional Resources:

Todd Nightingale, Cisco Meraki GM talks about Security Made Simple

Meraki Security Made Simple 

Security Made Simple Podcast

Cisco Live Cancún 2019

¿Eres de los que constantemente está leyendo sobre lo último en IT? ¿Te has imaginado que nos espera en el futuro? Cisco Live Cancún, es un espacio único para conocer y experimentar la tecnología simplificada, segura e inteligente de Cisco Meraki que permite a las organizaciones transformarse digitalmente.

Cisco Live Cancún será del 28 al 31 de octubre y quisiéramos compartirte algunas razones para animarte a vivir esta experiencia con nosotros:

  1. Sesiones técnicas: Meraki está incluido en siete sesiones técnicas. Estas sesiones se centran en tecnologías, estrategias de arquitectura, aplicaciones de solución de problemas para las soluciones o tecnologías de Cisco. Regístrese para las sesiones, ya que serán 100% Meraki. Los asistentes de Cisco Live pueden registrarse para estas presentaciones iniciando sesión en su cuenta en línea de Cisco Live e ingresando al catálogo de sesiones.
  2. Vertical summits: hay un total de siete sesiones verticales en Cisco Live Cancún y Meraki es patrocinador de tres. Manténgase actualizado, conozca las historias de éxito de otras compañías que ahora son una referencia en su industria, haga crecer su red y comience o adapte su estrategia tecnológica para llevar a su compañía un paso por delante de su competencia en las sesiones para gobierno, educación y salud.
  3. Zona DevNet: visite las sesiones de Meraki DevNet para obtener más información. Meraki tendrá seis sesiones en la zona DevNet. Los asistentes de Cisco Live pueden registrarse para estas presentaciones iniciando sesión en su cuenta en línea de Cisco Live e ingresando al Catálogo de sesiones.
  4. Demos (World of solutions): como complemento a todas las sesiones de aprendizaje, en el World of Solutions, podrá ver las soluciones de Cisco y sus partners. También podrá encontrar a Meraki en una variedad de demos en todo el Cisco Showcase: 
  • Launch | WiFi 6 Launch
  • Security | Meraki Security
  • Branch | Branch Security & SD-WAN powered by Meraki
  • Branch | Work Simple, Digital Workplace
  • Campus | Assurance in the Cisco Meraki Platform
  • Campus | High Density Wireless for Campus 

        5. Certificaciones: si necesita certificarse en las soluciones Cisco y reforzar su currículum, durante Cisco Live tiene la oportunidad de presentar cualquiera de los exámenes de certificación.

Además de todo lo que podrá aprender en este evento, Cisco Live Cancún también ofrece actividades divertidas y de ocio, como la tradicional carrera de 5 km, sesiones de yoga, el cóctel de apertura del WoS y la fiesta de clausura del evento.

Para más detalles de la participación de Meraki en Cisco Live visite nuestra página del evento y síganos en Twitter @MerakiLatam

Ready for iOS 13 and macOS 10.15 Catalina?

Image source

Are you excited about all the new Apple innovation coming in iOS 13 and macOS 10.15 Catalina? Great, so are we! Both iOS 13 and macOS Catalina are introducing significant changes to Apple’s enterprise management capabilities and we are excited to announce that Cisco Meraki Systems Manager will support new settings and features on both platforms. Here are some of the planned changes coming to Meraki Systems Manager to support iOS 13 and macOS Catalina.

Changes to Device Restrictions

Between iOS 13 and macOS Catalina, Meraki Systems Manager will support a grand total of seventeen device restriction settings changes.  The changes include six new restriction settings and eleven settings that are changing supervision requirements.  

New Restrictions

  • Allow Find My Device in the Find My app (iOS)
  • Allow Find My Friends in the Find My app (iOS)
  • Force Wi-Fi power on (iOS)
  • Allow Files Network Drive Access (iOS)
  • Allow Files USB Drive Access (iOS)
  • Allow continuous path keyboard (iOS)
  • Allow Handoff (New to macOS)

Supervision Requirement Changes

Now Requires Supervision:

  • Allow adding Game Center friends 
  • Allow installing apps
  • Allow use of camera
  • Allow cloud Keychain sync
  • Allow document sync 
  • Allow explicit music and podcasts
  • Allow use of iTunes Store
  • Allow use of Safari
  • Allow users to use saved passwords in Safari and AutoFill Passwords feature
  • Allow Facetime

No Longer Requires Supervision:

  • Allow remote screen observation by the Classroom app 

Restrictions settings that are changing status in iOS 13 and macOS 10.15, will retain their configured effect if an unsupervised device is upgraded. For example, if camera use is blocked by restrictions settings on an unsupervised device running iOS 12.4 and lower, the restriction setting will continue to block the Camera app when the device is upgraded to iOS 13.  

New Settings Updates

Along with the Restrictions payload, Apple has updated a number of different settings with enhanced options to affect behavior on devices. Meraki Systems Manager will also support changes to the following payloads at the time of release:

  • Wi-Fi – Support for WPA3 authentication
  • Exchange ActiveSync – Manage synching of Contacts, Calendars, and Mail independently on iOS
  • Web Content Filter – macOS support for Filter Data Providers
  • Privacy Preferences Policy Control – Manage new permissions in macOS
  • Single App Mode – Manage Voice Control settings on iOS or tvOS

Automated Device Enrollment Changes

Automated Device Enrollment (also known as DEP) will now enforce mandatory enrollment in Meraki Systems Manager.  Also, we have introduced a new option to skip “Dark Mode” setup on iOS and macOS.  

Coming Soon

In the weeks following the launch of iOS 13 and macOS Catalina, Meraki Systems Manager will continue the momentum by rolling out support for more advanced features and functionality. This includes, but is not limited to:

  • Support for brand new macOS Catalina settings payloads
  • New Extensible Single Sign On capabilities to allow for native Apple Kerberos SSO and 3rd-party integration
  • Custom enrollment webpage to more readily personalize and secure the enrollment process on devices

If you would like to learn more about Systems Manager, join us for an upcoming webinar (where you can qualify to earn free System Manager licenses), or call the Meraki sales line to start a risk-free evaluation.

 

New Features and Updates for MV Smart Cameras

As Meraki users are well aware, one of the benefits of the cloud management is seamless updates. We talked about the security benefits of automatic firmware upgrades in our recent blog post, “Security Starts with Simplicity.” Another advantage is getting new features and functionality without doing any extra work. Starting today, MV smart camera users have access to several new and upgraded features designed to make the solution even easier to use, and offer additional value.

Timeline Navigation Changes

The timeline may not be something people think about as a feature, but it’s a core part of how users interact with video. Our goal has been to make that experience as simple as possible. Natural language processing is one example of this — users can type in “yesterday evening” or “a week ago at noon” to access to the corresponding video. Now, users have new options for fluidly navigating the timeline using the scroll wheel on a mouse or the equivalent controls on a touchpad:

  • Zoom in and out by scrolling on a mouse.
  • Move forward or backward in the timeline bar by swiping on a touchpad, or shift+scroll on a mouse.

Finally, in a motion search, slider bars will appear on the timeline to indicate the time range for the results. Search results default to the middle 50% of the current visible timeline bar, and can be adjusted by moving the slider bars or changing the start and end date selectors above the motion search results. Refer to our documentation for more information on timeline navigation.

Motion Alerts 2.0

Motion alerts was one of our most requested features post-launch, and our engineering team granted that wish early last year. Alerts could be scheduled, and configured for the full frame or area of interest. When Motion Recap was released, images were included with motion alert emails to make alerts easier to understand. But our engineering team wasn’t going to stop there. They’ve been working on ways to make motion alerts better by making them more meaningful, and potentially reducing the frequency of false alerts. 

Motion alerts 2.0 offers new tools to select motion sensitivity levels and multiple areas of interest, allowing for greater flexibility. The average expected motion alerts per day are now displayed in the dashboard, making it easy to understand the impact of any configurations made. For more information, check out our motion alerts documentation.

Vehicle Detection

With this new release, MV smart cameras are getting a little smarter. In 2018, we announced advanced analytics with people detection. Now, using the same ML/AI capabilities, MV cameras will be able to detect vehicles in the frame of the camera. The vehicle detection model will be enabled on outdoor cameras (MV72), and vehicle count information will be displayed in the dashboard in the same format as people count is today. 

The ability for the camera to detect vehicles opens a variety of new applications. In addition to being able to discover motion events with vehicles more quickly, vehicle traffic and trends can be easily monitored in areas like parking lots or garages. Vehicle detection data is also available via the MV Sense API, allowing for custom integrations and applications. Check out our MV Object Detection documentation article for more information on vehicle detection.

Camera Field of View in Maps

Rounding out the list of new features is an enhancement to maps and floorplans. In December 2018, we added cameras to maps and floorplans. Now, the camera field of view (FoV) can be displayed for easy reference. The MV32 (fisheye) camera view is indicated by a circle, while other models will have a directional triangle. Simply use your mouse to position the FoV as needed. You’ll find more information about placing cameras in maps and floorplans in our documentation article, here.

How will you use the new features with your MV camera deployment? Share your plans and let us know what you think in the Meraki Community!

A Revolutionary Way to Not Watch Video

When it comes to our favorite shows, riveting movies, or funny cat videos, some of us can’t get enough screen time. But reviewing security camera footage is another matter. When tasked with going through hours of video to understand what happened during a particular incident or situation, most of us want a way to figure it out as quickly as possible.

What if there were a way to see the entirety of an event in a single image? Motion Recap makes this possible.

Motion Recap takes advantage of the Motion Search 2.0 algorithm, which uses background subtraction to isolate motion. Imagine a person walking down an empty street. Things in the background — buildings, signs, trees, or parked cars — remain unchanged. The only thing that changes is the location of that lone individual. Now imagine that activity as a series of still frames. A Meraki MV Smart Camera analyzes those frames to determine what is the same in each — in other words, the background. When the background is removed, what remains frame over frame is the motion (the individual walking).

A lone individual makes their way down the street.

Motion Recap images are composite images, built in-camera, that summarize a motion event. In the example described above, the Motion Recap image is created by superimposing the individual on the background at set intervals as they make their way down the street. This image allows the viewer to understand the entirety of an event with just a glance, instead of watching a 30 second video clip to see that the person did indeed walk down the street.

The path of a delivery person shown in a Motion Recap image

Find What You’re Looking for, Faster

The new Motion Recap feature on MV smart cameras enables users to find answers without having to watch video. Motion Search results are now displayed as Motion Recap images, allowing users to understand what has happened in video, without ever watching it. Say you need to find out who placed this dog toy on the couch in the video feed below. You use Motion Search to select the dog toy, and the Meraki dashboard returns results containing motion in that area.

Who moved the toy? Isolating activity using Motion Search.

Below are the six Motion Search results, returned as Motion Recap images. We can see the toy is on the ground in the top left image, and on the couch in the bottom middle image. In the fourth result, the bottom left, we can see an individual reaching down to pick up the toy and place it on the couch.

Motion Recap images offer answers without watching video.

Motion Recap images are grouped by events, and each image contains up to 30 seconds of motion. Longer events are made up of multiple images. By selecting any Motion Recap image, we can scroll through to view other images, or watch the corresponding video for that event.

Want to see the demo in action? Check out this video to find out how Motion Search and Motion Recap solve the mystery of who stole the MV Gnome in our office.

Motion Recap image from an MV32 fisheye camera

Motion Recap is now available to all customers with second generation MV smart cameras (models ending in -2). Users can toggle between Motion Recap and list view results using the buttons on the right-hand side. Or, if you prefer the list view, disable Motion Recap completely on the “Quality and retention” tab.

Let us know what you think about the new Motion Recap feature in the Meraki Community or request a risk-free evaluation to try out MV for yourself!

Our Topology Icons Speak Volumes

Communicating technical topics to a broad audience can be challenging. Photos, illustrations, and video are all helpful tools designed to simplify complex subjects, but it’s easy to go overboard when describing a product as intricate as a switch or security appliance.

To help everyone represent Cisco Meraki products and related concepts more clearly, Meraki has released a set of official topology icons (in png and svg formats) to encourage collaboration and discussion.

Speaking a single language

The icons help to describe key networking ideas more consistently across our entire product line. The products covered include our switches, access points, smart cameras, security and SD-WAN devices, virtual appliances, and other generic networking items. The images can be used freely, with attribution, as a part of the Creative Commons terms of use. We envision the icons being used in topology diagrams for deployment documents, blogs, forums, and social media.

Below is a symbol legend for some select icons you will find inside our larger icon set in the Meraki Library.

Topology Set Icons

Left-to-Right Arrows for Layer 2 – The two sets of arrows going right and left indicate communication between devices at Layer 2. Available on MS device icons. Example:

Diagonal Arrows for Layer 3 – Our Layer 3 icon adds diagonal arrows to indicate the routing capabilities available on MS and MX products. Example:

Wireless – The icon represents a device that has Wi-Fi capabilities. Available on MR wireless, select MX security appliances, and Z-Series teleworker appliances. Example:

MX SD-WAN and security specific symbols – The MX icon includes symbols for inspecting traffic (magnifying glass), diagonal arrows for routing, and a brick wall for protection against bad actors. Example:

Dotted Line for Virtual Appliances – The virtual appliance provides Meraki security and SD-WAN services for migrating IT services to Amazon Web Services and or Microsoft Azure. Example:

Server – The server icon has several sub-icons to highlight important characteristics. Available with cloud, directory, domain, file, web, and Meraki servers. Example:

If you would like to get started, consider downloading our full icon set to begin incorporating the images into your topology maps, Meraki community messages, personal blogs, and Twitter posts.


Meraki Topology Icons by Cisco Meraki are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.