CER with Meraki wireless APs

[Clifford McGlamry]

Customer has a hospital with a large number of wireless IP Phones.  These phones are connecting via Meraki Wireless APs.  

Is there any guidance available on how to set up location tracking for these phones so that CER knows where they are?  There is no wireless controller for these, and I'm scratching my head trying to figure out if this is even possible. 

[Adam Pawlowski · Accepted solution]

Last time I looked - you can add access points to the UCM with an import, importing all of the BSSIDs, using the "Import Infrastructure Devices" option in the Bulk Administration.

Refer to https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/unified-communications/unified-communications-manager-callmanager/200710-Configure-Wireless-Endpoint-Tracking-Fea.html for a general idea.

As far as I can tell you can't remove devices, you can just "deactivate" them.

I also can't find documentation on why the bssid field is labeled "BSSIDwithmask". It's pretty common on devices to have the ID increment per radio, so a mask would be very useful instead of managing multiple entries. I'd have to say to ask TAC on that one unless someone else knows.

CER will then pick up the APs for supported endpoints.

[Clifford McGlamry]

This certainly got me on the right track.  I tried this in my lab using a Netgear Wireless AP.  Some things I found when I set this up:

My original BSSID from the AP was 28:80:88:f7:ef:61.   I loaded it as that using the BAT tool, and confirmed the values in the file before uploading. 

Once it was uploaded, something in  the process changed it to 28:80:88:f7:ef:60.

I tried giving it something less than 12 characters, but it wouldn't accept it.  I wanted to give it a mask of something like:  28:80:88:f7:ef:XX, but couldn't figure that one out.

Once this was set up and had time to settle down, the AP flowed through to CER, and could be registered to an ERL.  

Thanks for your assistance Adam!

[scheived]

Ever find out any more about that BSSID Mask field? I'm adding Meraki AP, to cover both bands of radio I need a mask of something like 00:00:XX:00:00:00 but not sure how to add this. 

[Peter Kuznicki]

Have you find more information about BSSID Mask to cover both radios? Having same issue. 

[Clifford McGlamry]

@Peter Kuznicki , Cisco TAC finally admitted this is a bug.  It was fixed in later release on both the 11.5 and 12.5 trains (although the fixed 11.5 version we tried wasn't quite fixed, we were able to finally get to a version that worked on 12.5).  On the fixed version, you put in the specific BSSID and it imports it unchanged (no masking). 

[scheived]

Can confirm, I entered BSSID straight from meraki and all tracking is working fine on each wireless SSID.  

[Peter Kuznicki]

What worked for me was to calculate the Meraki BSSID based on the MAC OUI and the SSID number in use.  https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Wi-Fi_Basics_and_Best_Practices/Calculating_Cisco_Meraki_BSSID_MAC_Addresses.

[scheived]

You shouldn't need to do this 12.5.1.18100-14 and onward