Site Survey with Cisco Meraki APs

 Having done a few APoS surveys with Meraki APs I wanted to share a couple little tips. This is just gonna be a short little post about RF profiles and applying settings to the AP. 


While many of you may know that you can put the AP into Site Survey mode from the local status page of the AP. 

To access the local status page follow these instructions from Meraki's help guides. The default login for local status pages will be the serial number of the device you are accessing. If the AP has associated with a dashboard and a password has been set there you can find the login information under Network-wide>General. 


The issue with site surveys with Meraki is the setting of the channel width. Even in site survey mode, this will default to 80MHz wide channels. This setting cannot be adjusted from the site survey menu in the local status page. 

I have found, through talking with Meraki and trial and error, that the best way to apply settings to the AP is to set up a site survey RF profile in the dashboard and assign your APoS that profile. You can create and assign these RF Profiles under Wireless>Radio Settings


The little trick you need to know that got me multiple times before figuring it out. The Meraki APs will save their RF profile in their memories in case they lose power and connection to the dashboard which they will do during a site survey.

The gotcha is they only update that cached profile after being online and connected to the dashboard for two hours or so. This is what it takes for the AP to not revert to 80MHz wide channels by default. 

It is recommended to create the RF profile, assign it to the AP, then allow the AP to remain powered on and connected to the dashboard for a few hours prior to starting your survey, and converting it to Site Survey mode. 


I hope this short little article helps.

Stephen


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