Meraki Wifi Stumbler

Hello everyone,

Meraki has made a small smart web-based application for planning a wireless network. The application is called Meraki Stumble, and you can start here

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I've tried it on until now 5 PCs, but it does not work properly. The Stumbler starts well enough, but cannot see any wireless network. The PCs are all XP machines and I've used IE08 (but also unsuccessfully tried with Firefox and Safari). I have had other in my company trying and they too cannot get it to work.

I've talked with Meraki - and they say they have not heard of problems elsewhere, and I cannot on Google find any other, who cannot get it to work around the world. It made me to think about something with the Danish versions of XP and IE08 -- but it would be very strange.

The Stumbler is running as a Java applet and I have installed the latest version of Java on all PCs. One can wonder whether it has something to do with the Java applet must have access to the wireless network card in some way, and it could possibly somehow be a problem with the permission doing that.

It is interesting that I have access to a MacBook, on which the Stumbler runs without problems in Safari.

So I have following questions:

  1. Can you get stumbler to work on your PC (you must obviously have a wireless network card on the PC).
  2. If not - you have the slightest idea of what can be wrong (Setup of XP, setup of IE08, setup of Java, general safety settings or whatever)?

It will help much if you would spend 1 minute to test if it works on your PC and tell the result to the group.

MVH Lasse

PS! Together we can solve everything ....

Reply to
Lasse
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I tried it on an XP Pro Pentium 3 desktop with a Realtek 8187L USB wifi adapter and it worked with Firefox OK.

I did notice that it was not consistent in that it sometimes would not identify a network (random selection), but always seemed to be just one of those available.

Refreshing the scan would then see it, but it was a bit flakey in the way it operated.

I wasn't all that impressed with it and consider Inssider to be a similar and better approach in my estimation. But of course that is not web based.

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Reply to
me here

Works fine. XP SP3 under FireFox 3.6. However, under IE

8.0.6001.18702, I get a list of access points, but a blank graph showing the number of AP's. Both list all AP's as 802.11b, which is wrong. They're all 802.11g.

Something might be blocking downloading Java applets. Check security settings and make sure Java is enabled in your browser.

Go unto: Control Panel -> Java and check the "Network Settings". It should point to "Use Browser Settings" unless you have a proxy server running at your company.

Verify that Java is correctly installed:

Current is V1.6.0_18

If one person will take 1 hr to fix something, two will take 2 hrs, 3 will take 3 hrs, and so on.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I tried it under Explorer 8 on my Intel wifi card laptop and same same same problem as Jeff L - no graphs shown.

Under Firefox (latest uodate) all OK.

So it looks like it has a few problems.

Reply to
me here

Please excuse my "same" repeats - it's a problem with Xanaview.

Rob

Reply to
me here

I don't normally use IE but I have tried IE8(8.0.6001.18882) in Vista and in order to see the graph of AP's I had to use the "compatibility view" function from the "Page" or "Tools" drop down list. With or without using "compatibility view" I get a list of AP's correctly identified as 11g or 11n.

Reply to
Bob

Yep. I ran it again under IE 8, this time with the "compatibility view" enabled, and the graph shows. However, the list of AP's still show 802.11b for all the various neighborhood AP's. Probably something wrong with my Linksys WMP54G PCI card. The Meraki tool works correctly on my Toshiba something laptop.

However, there's yet another bug/problem. I have dual SSID's enabled on my Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 wireless router. Both interfaces should have sequential MAC addresses. The Meraki utility reports them as: 00:16:01:97:fd:a8 02:16:01:97:fd:a9 The 02 should be 00 and is wrong. Same problem with both IE8 and FF

3.6.
Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I assume you are running DD-WRT. I think this is a DD-WRT bug, I have just borrowed a G54 from my neighbour and set up 2 VAP's and when you check using Xirrus's WiFi Inspector you get the same problem. I also checked with a couple of other sniffers including Inssider and had the same problem. As a matter of interest the 2nd VAP's MAC did not follow sequentially but was 2 less than the "main" AP- AP ended E6 VAP1 ended E7 VAP2 ended E4

Reply to
Bob

From a usage point of view it won't be a bug as I suppose they are trying to avoid any MAC address conflicts with Buffalo products.

Reply to
Bob

Good point. MAC address duplication could become a problem. I should have checked the router. The Meraki tool is working correctly.

However, I just noticed that they also changed the last octet as well as the first for the second SSID. No need to also change the last octet, unless this some old code from when Brainslayer didn't change the first octet.

I'm running DD-WRT v24-sp2 (07/21/09) std. Hmmm... probably time to try the latest version.

# ifconfig | grep Ethernet br0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:01:97:FD:A6 br0:0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:01:97:FD:A6 eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:01:97:FD:A6 eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:01:97:FD:A8 vlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:01:97:FD:A6 vlan1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:01:97:FD:A7 wl0.1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 02:16:01:97:FD:A9

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

Do you mean v24-SP1? The website shows v24-SP1 as being the latest stable version, and v24-preSP2 as being the latest development release.

Reply to
Char Jackson

Nope. I like running the bleeding edge firmware before I inflict anything on my coffee shop customers. I switched to SP2 for the multiple SSID feature.

Incidentally, if you go to the download database at:

inscribe "whr-hp-g54" into the search box, and then click on the first item it finds, the recommended firmware version appears as: v24 preSP2 [Beta] Build 13064

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

I guess my question was how are you running SP2 when it's not available yet? Unless you're just having a bit of fun with me. :)

Exactly. No SP2 to be found anywhere, AFAICS. You just might be the only person running it.

Reply to
Char Jackson

I'm not sure what you mean by "available". Pre-SP2 Beta versions have been available for download since about a year ago. There have been something like 10,000 builds. I was actively following the development last summer, when it seemed that there was a new build every day.

Would you settle for Pre SP2 Beta or do you only run "released" software and firmware? There are some products available for general consumption that seem to be in a state of permanent beta test hanging on version 0.99999 seemingly forever. I had one company tell me that they'll release 1.0 as soon as they get more funding. There's some logic in that as users running Beta software assume all the responsibility for any and all failures, while released software magically is perceived to be the responsibility of the vendor.

Incidentally, the version I'm using is not perfect. I have to reboot the router every 6 days or the PPTP VPN daemon simply dies for no obvious reason. Much of the development seems to revolve around cramming yet another feature into an already extremely small memory space. The usual result is breaking some other feature or function.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

By "available" I mean "exists", as in SP2 doesn't seem to exist yet. All I see on the dd-wrt site are pre-SP2 builds, with 'pre' meaning 'before'. At some point it's reasonable to assume that one of those builds will become 'SP2', but they aren't there yet.

Anyway, I think I simply took you too literally. I see (now) what you meant when you said you were running SP2.

Reply to
Char Jackson

Just a note:- Bit 2 of the first octet is the Locally Administered Address (LAA) bit.

I guess perhaps the Buffalo router only has one MAC address allocated for the interface or that the software makes such an assumption.

I have a cisco 877W here with two SSIDs and it seems to allocate consecutive MAC addresses. No LAA bit set. Seems a decent chance that cisco have allocated each router a pool of addresses. Not sure tho'.

Recently noticed that Vista with Intel 3945/abg refuses to accept changed mac addresses that do not have the LAA bit set.

Reply to
bod43

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