Wireless networks sometimes are prone to issues, whether they be deployment related, client related, or even just environmental. Fortunately, the Meraki platform has again embraced the power of the cloud to actively monitor and report on the health and performance of any Meraki wireless networks.
The Wireless Health feature of the Meraki Dashboard offers some significant advantages when trying to troubleshoot issues such as client connectivity or authentication failures. As an example, Figure 3-20 shows the health overview for the Meraki HQ wireless network. From this page, it’s clear that the network and its clients are functioning smoothly overall and without issue.
Figure 3-20 The Meraki HQ Wireless Overview, Showing a Well-Functioning Wireless Network with No Notable Issues
Now if you compare that with the view in Figure 3-21 from a different network, the value of the Wireless Health feature and its ability to clearly demonstrate client-impacting issues becomes immediately obvious, as you can quickly and easily see at a glance that there is an authentication-related issue for several devices, unlike the previous network shown in Figure 3-20.
Figure 3-21 The Wireless Health Report for an Example Network, Showing Failures Relating to Authentication for Two Clients
From this point, you can review the rest of the report to get more details about where the issue may lie. The rest of the Wireless Health page reports several other helpful perspectives, such as issues by SSID, AP, individual client, and even by device type, to help scope and further narrow down potentially impacting issues. This makes it easy to determine if a specific SSID is improperly configured, if a specific AP is connected to an incorrect port, or if a specific client or client type is having issues that are otherwise not present for other clients or client types.
As Figure 3-22 shows for a simple home network, the Wireless Health feature can provide extremely valuable information when you’re trying to determine the potential scope and impact of a reported behavior.
Figure 3-22 Additional Details of the Wireless Health Report for the Network Showing Client Authentication Issues
As just demonstrated, Meraki’s Wireless Health feature helps to take the guesswork out of attempting to triage a wireless issue by providing important details that help to determine the scope and impact of a behavior from a quickly accessible and easy to interpret report. This helps to save time and refocus troubleshooting efforts in appropriate directions, leading to a faster time to resolution for many issues than a more traditional troubleshooting approach.