Note: If you already have your Meraki Network setup and just want to use the additional NetEquality reports, click Using NetEquality Alerts and Reports.
For a printable version of this document, please enter: http://www.netequality.org/wiki in your browser’s address bar (you can’t just click this link).
It is now easy for anyone to setup and install a wireless network for their neighborhood or apartment complex for just a few dollars per dwelling (often under $25!). Even better, you can share a single DSL with 25 or so neighbors, reducing the cost per user per month to about $1. It should take you no more than a few minutes to do it, even if you consider the extent of your technical skills to be no more than turning on your computer and checking your email.
The magic that makes this work is the Meraki Mini, a very low-cost ($49 retail) “smart” box about the size of a pack of cards that can spread a single DSL across multiple rooms and buildings. We say “smart” as it does all the work of figuring out how to route the wireless signals. All you have to do is plug it in!
When we say “easy”, we really mean it. As you progress through this document, you will see increasing levels of “technical” information. (Some people actually like that stuff and want as many bells and whistles as possible. The Meraki Mini won’t disappoint them, either.) But those sections are completely optional and are not needed in any way to get your network up and running! We’ll let you know when you get to these sections.
(Note that we can help you plan your network. Contact dave@netequality.org or mike@netequality.org with information about your project and we can make some specific recommendations.)
So let’s get started...
| Network: | A group of computers that can talk to each other – in our case, wirelessly. |
| Gateway: | The Meraki Mini that is connected to the internet (usually a DSL connection). |
| Repeater: | A Meraki Mini that is not connected to the DSL and “repeats” the signals from local computers and other nodes to the gateway. |
| Node: | A generic name for a Meraki Mini which can be either a Gateway or a Repeater. |
In a traditional network (like you might have at home or the office), each computer has to be connected to the internet via a hard-wired cable. The expense and inconvenience to residents of retrofitting apartment buildings (let alone neighborhoods) with cabling is huge. The Meraki Mini solves this problem by spreading a wireless signal across many rooms and buildings - far beyond the range of a single wireless router that you might find at a computer store.
This document grew out of our experiences researching and finally deploying a network for low-income properties. We had several requirements for the network:
The Meraki Mini is the only system we were able to find to meet all of these goals. Specifically, it is the only solution that works out-of-the-box without the need to configure (and understand) any technology. The only thing you need to know is where to plug them in, and that is what this next section is all about:
The first step is to figure out where you will get your internet connection. Usually this will be a DSL. Cable is also available, but check with your cable provider. We have been told by some cable providers (and DSL providers, too) that they do not allow their customers to “share” their connection with others outside their home or office. You will want a provider that DOES allow sharing. Many DSL companies now allow this, but you should always check with their “terms of service” agreement before starting. We use Covad DSL, locally.
If you only have a single internet connection feeding your mesh network, it is desirable to have the Gateway be as central to the project as possible. The reason for this is that for each Repeater you pass through to get to the Gateway the maximimum speed is cut roughly in half. So if most of your Repeaters have a direct (or single “hop”) connection to the Gateway, speed is maximized. The easiest way to accomplish this is to put your DSL connection as close to the middle of the area you want to cover (an apartment complex, for example) as possible. Another way is to have multiple DSL’s. In fact, it is often better to have multiple lower-speed DSL’s feeding your Network than a single high-speed DSL. If one DSL were to go down, your network will switch-over to the other DSL keeping your network up, if a bit slower. Plus, by having multiple DSL’s spread throughout your network, you minimize the speed loss of “hopping” the signal over several Repeaters to get from internet to user.
If you are using the Minis in apartments, we recommend that you have one for every 2-4 apartments that you want to cover, on average. This will vary depending upon the type of construction used for the apartments. If concrete/brick/stone or other “dense” materials, you may need one for every 1 or 2 apartments. For wood frame construction, 3-4 seems about right.
If you are using the Minis in a residental neighborhood, we recommend that each house have its own Mini as houses are typically larger than apartments and yards separate the Minis much more than in apartments. And if the houses are especially large, you can even add multiple Minis to the house to provide excellent coverage in every room.
Indoor vs outdor nodes? Some things to keep in mind:
So why are outdoor nodes used? Historically they were used as mesh repeaters were expensive so you wanted to install as few as possible. This meant big antennas to both broadcast and be able to pickup tiny incoming wireless signals. Other cases are where you want to create point-to-point connections over large distances.
With the advent of very low cost mesh technology like the Meraki Mini, this often isn’t necessary any more. Let’s face it - you typically don’t care about outdoor wireless. You want it indoors. So we suggest turning the historical installation approach “inside out” and instead use a greater number of very low cost devices indoors (where the people and computers are) and save money on installation (which goes to nearly zero $). By deploying densely indoors (eg, one indoor device for 3-4 apartments), your total cost is lower and you will have better indoor performance.
We usually don’t do outdoor installations. In many situations they aren’t needed and the $ they consume is often better spent in more densely deploying indoor nodes. Before installing an outdoor node, please ask yourself if this is needed. You’ll often save yourself time, money and grief by deploying indoor, where possible.
If you are installing in private homes to create a community wireless network (where all the neighbors chip in to pay for the monthly DSL cost), then the standard Meraki Mini at $49 is just fine as security isn’t really an issue.
For apartments/rental units/hotels or any situation where the resident isn’t the owner, we highly recommend the wall-plug version. We sell this on our Store to secure the Mini and the power supply to the wall and meet building codes / fire regulations. This will greatly minimize theft, vandalism or residents unplugging the Mini to use the outlet for something else (the wall-plug version leaves one plug in the outlet available). It is a very generic box that blends into the wall and hides the antenna and lights so it doesn’t look like anything worth stealing. It really isn’t a good idea to install the standard Mini in these situations. While the Mini does have slots on the back that will allow it to be mounted on screws in the wall, it is simple to pulll off and your loss due to theft or being unplugged will be much higher than the few extra dollars for the wall-mount case.
OK, so you have your DSL and your Minis have arrived. Now you just need to plug them in. It’s easy! For this example, let’s take a hypothetical 20-unit apartment complex with a central community center / rental office building. We’ll use 5 Minis (one Gateway and 4 Repeaters). Remember that a Gateway Mini is simply the one that is plugged into our DSL (in the Rental Office in this case), and is marked as
. Repeaters are shown as
.
In the above diagram, the Gateway Mini is in the Rental Office. If the Rental Office already has a DSL, this means that you can share that connection with residents for NO additional cost. Here are some important installation suggestions:
Before you install the Meraki Minis in individual apartments or hallways, it is a good idea to write down where you are putting each one. This is so that later if you get notification of an outage, you’ll be able to know where that particular Mini is!
We like to plan before we install and write (using a Sharpie pen that can write on plastic) the location on each Mini before we go out to the installation site. So, in the above hypothetical apartment example, we’d write “#3”, “#9”, “#13”, “#19” and “Rental Office” on the back of the 5 Minis we are going to install. This makes sure we get the right one in the right place.
Next, you’ll need to add your network to Meraki Dashboard. If you haven’t done so already, don’t worry as Meraki has a simple “wizard” that will guide you through the basics.
The first step is to create a Meraki account if you don’t already have one. Go to dashboard.meraki.net and click “Create New Account”. You’ll see a form that asks for your name and address information. You’ll use the email address you enter here to login to Meraki Dashbaord, and they will email you your password to this email address.
Once you have this information, go to dashboard.meraki.net again and enter your email and password and click “sign in”. You should see a page that suggests you run a “wizard” that will help you setup your network.
On this first page, enter the “Network Name”. This is used ONLY inside Meraki Dashboard to show you which network you are looking at (Meraki Dashboard lets you have several networks in one account). Next, it asks for the “Network SSID”. This is the name of the network your users will see on their computers when they try to connect. A good selection here is the name of the apartment complex or neighborhood. It is also helpful to put something like “Free” at the end so users know this is really an open network.
The second page asks you who can access your network and how much bandwidth (speed) they will get. The networks we deploy are always set to “Everyone (open)” as we want people to join with a minimum of hassle. The next question asks if you’d like to set the maximum user bandwidth. You can think of your internet connection as a pipe and this as a faucet that will turn down the maximum speed users will see. Setting this to “Yes” is a VERY good idea as otherwise one or two very heavy users can easily consume the entire available bandwidth making it very slow for everyone. The default values are a good starting point that you can adjust up or down as needed.
The third page lets you “claim” an order. This takes all the Meraki Minis you have purchased and puts them into a network. If you bought your Minis from us, then you will have received an Order Number (via email). Enter that number and all your Minis will automatically be added to the network you have just created in the steps above. You will also enter the address of the network here. This will place all your Meraki Minis at that address on the Meraki Dashboard Map View. (Note that if you have lost or don’t have a claim number, you can still enter each Meraki Mini manually using the “Add Individual Node” section.)
Once you have entered your Order Number and Network Address, you can click “View Summary” to see the results of the wizard.
The following step is essential (or we won’t be able to help you with your deployments should you have any problems!). You need to turn on Meraki’s “Public API Information Sharing” feature. You’ll find this in Meraki Dashboard under the “network settings” tab at the top of the page.
This needs to be set to “ALL”. This is what gives our servers access to your network data so it can produce the extra reports for you and allow us to help, if needed.
Next, you’ll enter a Meraki “Network Handle”. This is a unique identifier for your network that others (such as our servers) can use to retrieve and analyze the network data. These handles are case sensitive, so remember exactly how you enter it here. You’ll use this as your sign-in ID for NetEquality’s extra reports.
Only one step left: Go to the Meraki Dashboard Map View page and “drag” your nodes into their exact position on the map. The map page can be found under the “monitor” tab, then “map view”. All your nodes will be shown roughly at the address you entered, and you can now drag them into their true position by clicking on each one and dragging it to the correct location. Make sure you drag the right one to the right location. If you click on each icon on the map, you’ll see some tabs appear on the left. The first tab is called “Summary”, and you can see the “hardware address” and “serial number”. Since you haven’t deployed your Minis yet, you can look at the location you wrote on the back of each Mini to make sure you you move the right one to the right place on the map. While you are there, it is a really good idea to give each Mini a name, too. Under the “Summary Tab”, you’ll see a “Name” entry with a “change” link next to it. Click there and a dialog will open. Enter the name for this Mini. In our hypothetical apartment complex, we’d enter “Apartment #3”, “Apartment #9”, “Apartment #13”, “Apartment #19” and “Rental Office” Names for the Minis we are installing.
Now you are ready to deploy!
The mini can be plugged into any outlet as shown below:
For apartments and hotels, we Highly recommend the wall plug Mini. It is a mini in a secure case that simply plugs into any outlet, leaving one plug free for other appliances. This is idea for “public” installations where you don’t want users tampering with the Mini:
We like to use security screws to further prevent users from tampering with the units.
One of your Minis (the Gateway) has to be plugged into your DSL router. For this, you’ll need a standard Meraki Mini and Ethernet cable. Most DSL routers have 1 or more Ethernet ports and you can usually connect to any available port if there are more than one. Plug the other end into the Mini.
Once all the Minis have been plugged in, wait about 5 minutes for them to power up and form the mesh network.
The easiest way to test your network is to take a laptop into each apartment and see how well it works to browse the internet.
The first thing to do is to set the laptop to look for an SSID of only “meraki” (or whatever you set it to in the Meraki Manage Wizard, above). On Windows XP, this is done by right-clicking on the wireless network icon in the taskbar “notification area” (the small icons near the date/time display on the right). Then select “View Available Wireless Networks” from the pop-up Menu. Next a dialog like this will appear:
Click on the “Change the order of preferred networks” link on the left and you’ll see:
For the purposes of this test, you’ll want to make sure it can’t connect to anything except the SSID you set so remove any SSIDs that appear in this list by clicking “remove” until the list is empty then click “add” to add “meraki” (or again, whatever you set in the Meraki Manage Wizard, above). Next click on “OK” twice to save and close these settings.
Now you are ready to test!
It is important that as you wander around, you turn off, then on the wireless adapter on the laptop (most laptops have a switch for this so they can be used on airplanes where wireless isn’t allowed). As you enter a new apartment or room that you want to test, turn the wireless switch to the “off” position, wait a second or two, then turn it on again. It will usually take a few moments to find the network again and once it says “connected” in the taskbar (if you are using a Windows Laptop), then you are ready to test. Meraki wireless networks default to an SSID of “meraki”, so this is what you’ll want to be looking for, or whatever you changed it to in the Meraki Manage Wizard, above.
Why do you have to do this? Wireless adapters in computers like to stay “locked” onto the wireless access point (in our case, one of the Minis) unless the signal gets really bad. Since you are wandering around, and Meraki networks have many such access points, if you don’t switch off then on your wireless adapter, you’ll get false results as it may be trying to talk to a Mini that is now farther away then another which would have a better signal. Users typically don’t wander like this, so by turning off then on your wireless, you’ll see what a stationary user would see.
At each location, it’s a good idea to refresh a page with lots of graphics a few times. You can use http://www.netequality.org as it has several images. You should see each page load in under 5 seconds with no missing images if it is working well.
If you have some areas that don’t work or don’t work well, try moving the closest Mini to a location closer to the Gateway or add a Repeater Mini and retest.
Or, if you’d like to make certain your network is working well without having to manually test each location, you can use Meraki’s “Dashboard” site and (optionally) the NetEquality “Monitoring” site (the next section of this document) to gain a clear understanding of how it is working and setup alerts if something goes wrong. This is the best way to make sure everything is working well.
This starts the Completely Optional part of the documentation. The following instructions will give you additional features and allow you to get notices of outages. It will also help you verify your installation. These are the tools we use to troubleshoot and verify the networks we install, so if you want to be certain your network is working well, we highly recommend using them.
(Note: Use of these tools is for customers of the NetEquality Store (http://www.netequality.com) and users at installations done by NetEquality. While it isn’t closed to other users currently, we reserve the right to do so in the future.)
NetEquality provides a free alerting and mapping system for Meraki Mesh Networks. It works by extending the free management site producted by Meraki, not replacing it. You will retain all the features of Meraki Dashboard and gain several new features including:
NetEquality.org developed this site for its own deployments and has made it available to the entire Meraki community. It relies on the XML export feature of Meraki Dashboard (more on this later) to extract your network data and present it to you in new and different ways.
These additional features are focused on creating networks that are easy to deploy, manage and understand. For example, the daily summary email alerts feature was added as real-time alerts are pretty inefficient for property managers. It is far easier to get a daily report that aggregates all outages so when time allows, they can be addressed at once. The various new diagrams and maps help you deploy the highest quality network possible. You’ll be able to see when nodes aren’t working well over time and see in a simple diagram where you have poor connectivity between nodes. This diagram also works well for “vertical” deployments (ie, tall apartment buildings) where a 2D Google Map isn’t going to let you place these nodes in a meaningful way. And if you do use the Google Map in Manage, you’ll love the new color-coding of nodes by quality, 24-hour quality graph in the node popups, automatic gateway routes, etc.
While everything should work under Microsoft Internet Explorer, we develop and optimize it for Firefox. If you don’t have the Firefox browser, you can get it here: http://www.mozilla.com.
It is easy to create your NetEquality.net account and begin importing data. Simply go to http://www.netequality.net and click on the “Add Network” button at the top of the page:
You’ll fill in the following information:
| Network Handle | This is the Meraki “Network Handle” you created when you turned on the Meraki API Sharing feature, above. This will also be your login name on NetEquality.net. Meraki network handles are case sensitive so be sure to enter it exactly as you did on Meraki’s Manage site. |
| Password | This is for this site only and should be different from your Meraki Manage password. This will allow you to give out network-specific logins to others without compromising your account-wide Meraki Password. |
| This is your email address so we can contact you about new features or problems with the site. Note that we do not share, rent, or otherwise give out your email addresses to anyone. | |
| Notification Email | This is a list of email addresses that will receive 1) immediate gateway outage notifications and 2) daily summary report notifications of outages for all nodes. We enter our email addresses here when we setup a network plus the email addresses for on-site property managers so they can check in on an apartment if the resident unplugged their node. Note that to avoid duplicate email alerts, you can disable email alerts on Meraki Manage if you use this feature. |
Email alerts come in two formats, one for immediate Gateway outage notifications and one for the daily summaries. Gateway notifications are always sent out on the hour that they are down (so, if a gateway goes down at 11:30a, you’ll receive the email alert shortly after noon). Gateway notifications look like this:
The following GATEWAYS are down at <your-network-name>: <node-name>. Last Check-in: 39 minutes, 10 seconds. etc... This is an automated alert. Please don't reply to this address. You may view your network map at http://www.netequality.net/map.php?id=<your-network-name>.
The daily summary of all nodes that are down for a network looks similar:
The following nodes are down at <your-network-name>: <node-name>. Last Check-in: 39 minutes, 10 seconds. etc... This is an automated alert. Please don't reply to this address. You may view your network map at http://www.netequality.net/map.php?id=<your-network-name>.
Gateway notifications are sent in near real time as they are likely to affect a large group of people so you should know as soon as possible. If you have built your network densely enough, repeater outages are not nearly as urgent and are sent daily to accommodate the schedules of property managers.
Note that if you prefer real-time alerts for all nodes, simply don’t enter any email addresses for alerts in the “add” or “edit” network forms and use Meraki Manage’s alerting feature.
The Node List Report is similar to Meraki’s “Nodes” report. Differences from Meraki’s node list are these:
(Note: As soon as Meraki updates their XML feed to include some recently added information (ping loss, latency, throughput, etc), we’ll add these to this report as well.)
Note: This report requires Java. If it doesn’t work, go to http://www.java.com and download (it’s free) for your computer.
The Network Diagram Report draws your network using node relationships. There is no need to place nodes at a specific location (such as a Google map) as the actual placement is calculated dynamically and is based upon the number of neighbors each node sees.
This report draws Meraki Minis in ellipses (gateways are marked with a (g) after the name). The node is color-coded by its gateway “metric”, using the same scale as used for the 24-hour network quality graph above (< 8,000 green, < 12,000 yellow, otherwise red). If a node isn’t checking in at all, it will be gray. You want to see all green nodes.
Extra circles around the ellipses indicate users. So a Mini with 10 users will have 10 circles around it.
Color coded lines are drawn between the nodes that represent the signal quality. The color-coding is a signal of greater than 20 is “green”, between 10 and 20 is “yellow” and 10 and under is “red”. You’ll actually see two lines for most nodes as a line is drawn each direction showing the signal that each node sees for the other (the actual signal is displayed near the arrowhead).
This is key: You don’t want to see a lot of “asynchronous links”. These are links where the signal is good in one direction, but poor or even non-existent in the other. As these lines are often drawn right on top of each other, look at the arrowhead at both ends of the line between nodes to see how good the signal really is.
Note that you will see a lot of yellow and red lines as well. These are links between nodes that might usually (yellow) and sometimes (red) actually work, but are poor enough that they could fade leaving the node poorly or disconnected and the users associated with that node seeing very slow or no internet access.
Ideally what you want is at least 1 and preferably 2 green lines connecting each node to another node. This assures that each node has both a strong connection and a backup should something to that link fail. Doing this will result in a fast and robust connection for users.
What you will want to correct are nodes that have only red or a single yellow connection to another node. These are subject to fade and may result in slow or no connection to the internet should noise increase.
You can use the controls on the right to move around the map or center it on the screen. The magnifying glasses will zoom in and out. You can search for gateways by simply hitting the “Next” button or search for any other node by entering its name in the “Find” box. There are some useful keyboard shortcuts as well: ‘+’ will zoom in and ‘-’ will zoom out but half as fast as using the magnifying glass icons.
Hovering the cursor over any node will display its IP address and gateway metric.
The Google Map Report is very similar to Meraki’s. The new features are:
As this map is read-only, it is safe to put on a web site accessible to users, which we’ll show you how to do next:
Since everything on netequality.net is read-only, it is safe to give out some URLs for the various reports. In the next section, we’ll show you how to put these reports on your own web pages.
To view the Node List Report:
http://netequality.net/nodes_attn.php?id=<network-handle>
To view the Network Diagram report:
http://netequality.net/makedot?id=<network-handle>
To view the Google Map report:
http://netequality.net/map.php?id=<network-handle>
Where <network-handle> should be replaced with your network handle.
It is very easy to embed these reports on a web site with a single line of HTML code! Here is how:
<IFRAME SRC="http://www.netequality.net/stats.php?id=mariposa" width="100%" height="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="NO"></IFRAME>
<IFRAME SRC="http://www.netequality.net/usage_graph.php?id=mariposa" width="100%" height="100%" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" SCROLLING="NO"></IFRAME>
<IFRAME SRC="http://www.netequality.net/nodes_attn.php?id=mariposa" width="700" height="400"></IFRAME>
<IFRAME SRC="http://www.netequality.net/map.php?id=cedros" width="400" height="400"></IFRAME>
<img src="http://www.netequality.net/makedot.php?id=jardines">
In all the above examples, follow “id=” with your network handle instead of the name shown, which is one of ours. You can change the width and height as desired.
You can also embed an individual node 24-hr quality graph:
<img src="http://www.netequality.net/graph2.php?ip=6.247.203.107">
Replace the “6.247.203.107” node IP with the IP address of one of your nodes.
Here is a “Dashboard” like example HTML page with several reports. View the source of the page once it is loaded to see the actual code:
We hope you enjoy your Meraki Mini Network and find these additional reports and alerts useful. If you have any suggestions or comments, please let us know! You can email suggestions to mike@netequality.org