Meraki Wireless - SSID in Local Mode as available on Cisco WLCs

[oguarisco]

Dear all,

I'm familiar with Unified Wireless Solution but not with Meraki one...

I need to find out if Meraki is a possible solution to be implemented instead of WLCs in the following environment:

- more Internal SSID in FlexConnect Mode (in WLCs Central Authentication and Local Switching at the first L2/L3 switch);

- one Guest SSID in Local Mode (in WLCs Central Authentication and Central Switching at the Wireless Controller);
The Guest WLAN is terminated at the Controller and the traffic before reaching Internet is intercepted by a Gateway which present the Splash Page to Users.

Is it possible with Meraki APs to have a Local Mode SSID so the User traffic is tunnelized from the APs to the Wireless Controller? To do that should we have an AP dedicated since Meraki is controller-less solution?

Thanks a lot for the support

BR

Omar

[Scott Fella · Accepted solution]

Meraki is cloud so it is very different from Unified. Meraki APs are connect to a trunk port so basically everything will terminate to the switch the AP is connected to.

[oguarisco · Accepted solution]

Hi Scott,

I thought it was not possible but maybe with a dedicated Meraki AP configured in special mode it would/could be supported...

Thanks a lot for the confirmation...I'll definitiveli stay on Unified Wireless with WLC HW.

BR

Omar

[Karsten Iwen · Accepted solution]

What Scott mentioned is the "basic operation" of Meraki APs. But there is also the possibility to tunnel everything (configurable per SSID) to a Meraki MX Security-Appliance which gives you basically what you have on the WLC with Local mode.