SNMP is also a potential option that can be employed for automation with any Meraki platform. One notable difference between SNMP and webhooks or syslog is that when using SNMP, you have the choice to poll directly to a local interface on a device or to poll out to the Meraki Cloud Controller, depending on your use case and the specific information you’re looking to acquire.

When polling out to the Meraki Cloud Controller, you need to use the proprietary Meraki Cloud Controller MIB, which you can download from any network after enabling SNMP for that network. This requires the network management system (NMS) to be able to reach out to the Meraki cloud over the public Internet, but it also provides access to much of the device-reported data from just a single polled entity, such as (but not limited to) the following:

• Device serial/MAC

• Device status (online/offline/alerting)

• Device last contacted at time

• Device public IP address

• Device connected client count

• Device interface list

• Device interface stats (SentPkts/RecvPkts/SentBytes/RecvBytes)

• Configured VLAN details

• Configured SSID details

When polling directly to a device, you can obtain additional, more detailed data from the device level through the support of the industry-standard IF-MIB and SNMPv2-MIBs. This requires polling to multiple different entities because, unlike polling out to the Meraki Cloud Controller, polling directly to a device requires each related device be polled directly. This method, however, offers some additional advantages, such as the ability to perform all polling through locally controlled network paths and the additional data points provided through the use of the industry-standard IF-MIB and SNMPv2-MIBs.

SNMP is excellent for providing additional visibility and monitoring for a network or deployment with the use of an NMS, but where SNMP really comes into play in regard to automation is through the use of SNMP traps. Unlike traditional SNMP polling, which is relatively passive and requires the NMS to reach out to an endpoint to get updated information, SNMP traps allow for active notification and alerting of events through the use of SNMP. When configured to do so, the Meraki Cloud Controller will generate an SNMP trap to be sent to the configured NMS over the Internet, allowing for real-time alerting of events such as (but not limited to) the following:

• Uplink status change

• Device becomes reachable/unreachable from the Meraki cloud

• Port connected/disconnected

• Port speed change

• Port UDLD errors

• Configuration settings changed

• Radius server unreachable

• Warm spare failover

• Client IP conflict

By integrating SNMP traps, you can use SNMP in conjunction with a publicly accessible NMS to provide more active alerting regarding device-level events as they happen and trigger additional alerting or actions based on received traps without worrying about polling intervals or other caveats that could arise when using SNMP without traps configured.