Cisco or Meraki: The Choice is Yours

One of the best new features of the Cisco 9166 is the ability to migrate your access point between Meraki and Cisco platforms. Through the Cisco 9800 dashboard, they have made migrating between the two very simple.

From your 9800 dashboard, you can access your "Migrate to Meraki Management" wizard through the following: Configuration>Wireless>Migrate to Meraki Management Mode

In the next window, it will show all of your access points that are able to "Migrate to Meraki Management Mode". Select the AP(s) you wish to migrate and the wizard will validate and export the ones you have chosen. Currently, the 9162, 9164, and 9166 are able to migrate between Cisco Catalyst and Meraki. Before you do your migration, make sure you have the appropriate Catalyst Center and Meraki cloud licensing and have verified connectivity to your Meraki cloud environment.

Once the access point has been successfully migrated, you must go into your Meraki dashboard and claim your new device. When you started the migration wizard, it should have shown you what the Meraki serial number is you will use to claim your device.

Inside the Meraki dashboard, to claim you device, you will navigate to the following: Organization>Configure>Inventory

After your device has been claimed, you will be able to add this access point to existing networks or create new ones. You will see as you expand your Meraki environment, your available options inside networks will change. After adding a claimed access point to an existing network, I now have the option to create SSIDs, configure RRM parameters, provide a location heatmap, and create a splash page if I desired. If your current network has any DHCP services, the access point can provide IP addresses to clients using what is available from that network.

When the device has been added to a network, you will see a wireless option appear as an option. Compared to another network that does not have any wireless APs added.

Moving the access point from Meraki mode back to Cisco is a little more difficult. I did not see any option for it so I reached out to Meraki and found out you have to put in a support ticket for them to trigger the move. I am hoping to get a capture of that when I need to move an AP back.

With AP added

Without