TalesFromtheWiFi

A blog about Wi-Fi

Category: Wi-FI

  • It’s always the Wi-Fi (even when it isn’t)

    James

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    I was recently speaking with a colleague after they returned from visiting their college freshman for parents weekend. The student was frustrated they’re smartphone wasn’t working as well as they expected and were blaming the Wi-Fi. The colleague pointed out to their child that they were in an area where there wasn’t any Wi-Fi and… Read more

  • Merakiwifi.app

    James

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    Disclaimer – When using tools of this nature it is strongly recommended to create a separate, read-only API key. There is no need to risk your API key being compromised and allowing a bad actor to perform irreparable harm to your organization. While this tool open states it does not store API keys, I find… Read more

  • Managing Large Networks

    James

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    Managing large networks come with a considerable number of complexities. Most of these complexities can be managed but considerable care must be taken as seemingly minor changes can have major impact. The network I manage currently has more than 14,000 wireless access points deployed across more than 200 sites supporting more than 150,000 users. Below… Read more

  • Issues binding new network to configuration template

    James

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    This issue began occurring recently in the “New” Meraki dashboard view. The problem does not occur in the “Old” view. Recently our install team was attempting to create a new network and had issues when binding it to the template. The issue can be seen in the screenshots below. When attempting to create the network,… Read more

  • Wireshark – 802.11 frames encrypted

    James

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    Being able to decrypt 802.11 frames in a frame capture may be necessary from time to time. I personally have worked on several issues with our vendors TAC where they need frame captures to analyze and resolve a bug. They may need to be able to decrypt the data to do this. This technique is… Read more

  • Unknown Unknowns

    James

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    Things we don’t know that we don’t know. This is going to be a short post about an experience I had working with one of our cabling/installation vendors. This particular situation occurred on an outdoor access point installation project I was involved with. The vendor is a vendor that regularly performs installations for our infrastructure… Read more

  • lswifi

    James

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    Ever support cloud based wireless access points that don’t include the uptime of the wireless access point? I can think of at least one vendor where the uptime of the access points is not available in via the cloud management dashboard. Typically support can provide the uptime of the access points but frequently reaching out… Read more

  • Filtering in Wireshark

    James

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    The intent of this article is to provide some simple tips on how to better implement filters in Wireshark to be sure the intended results are achieved. I’m going to show some helpful filtering techniques that can be used when performing and analyzing captures. Applying filters properly is important to be sure you are seeing… Read more

  • Meraki Traffic Shaping with Configuration Templates…Unseen Categories

    James

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    This post will be an exploration in to traffic shaping with templates in the Meraki dashboard. More specifically, how the categories are displayed compared to standalone networks. While recently troubleshooting an issue with an application that uses Web RTC traffic, it was discovered there are some differences in the way traffic categories are presented when… Read more