Populating the Lync LIS database with Meraki BSSID's, but where are they hiding!?!

If it’s never setup then you don’t miss it, but once you’ve started to use it and have it embedded in your culture it becomes invaluable. What am I talking about? Presence? Well of course – but what I’m talking about is the Lync Location Database.

As I’m in the UK we don’t have to worry about the E911 service here and where I have seen it the most is for seeing where someone is within a building/campus.

Usually the main thing that you use to differentiate the network you are on is the IP address your host has - different subnets for different buildings. But the other powerful area is to have your location automatically update as you move between wireless access points ("Tobie is in meeting room 5").

This is achieved by finding the BSSID of the access points in you organisation and then using the Set-CsLisWirelessAccessPoint PowerShell cmdlet and supplying the relevant details.

Recently a client moved from an HP ProCurve network to a new Meraki setup. This meant that all of the BSSID’s that where in the LIS database where now redundant and needed to be repopulated. But – where to get the BSSID’s from? In the ProCurve Wireless Edge Services controller you could see them but the Merkai dashboard does not show them (I’ve added it as a feature suggestions so hope it gets included in a future sprint), so instead you need to do some extra work.

I emailed Meraki support a few times and didn’t get a satisfactory answer on how to ID the BBSID <> AP relationship so eventually picked up the phone and got through to a brilliant techie, who after explaining my problem found some information in an internal Cisco document that shows how the BSSID is created:

2.4 Ghz (r0): +02x0 to 1st octet; +40x0 to 3rd octet
5 Ghz (r1): +02x0 to 1st octet; +50x0 to 3rd octet
SSID
1st: No change
All others: +01x0 to 6th octet for each subsequent SSID

2.4 Ghz Radio 5 GHz Radio
SSID 0 02:00:40:00:00:00 02:00:50:00:00:00
SSID 1 02:00:40:00:00:01 02:00:50:00:00:01
SSID 2 02:00:40:00:00:02 02:00:50:00:00:02...


So what does this mean? Well, first you go to your Meraki Dashboard, navigate to:

Monitor - Access points

and grab the following information:

AP Name and MAC Address

Access Points and MAC addresses in Meraki

Now navigate to Configure - SSID and click Show all my SSIDs (you need to do this as this shows which slot your wireless network is in, the first page shows configured ones but not necessarily the slot that the wireless network occupies):

SSID's shown
You can now perform some old school masking by hand to try to sort out your network......


........or use my handy Excel Spreadsheet to do it for you automagically (thanks Daniel Mycock for helping to write the magic).

Simply add in the names and MAC addresses into the table and select the "slot" that the SSID is in from the drop down (green box).

Once you have done so you will now have the BSSID's to create your PowerShell with:


Throw that onto a server and get it working by publishing the Communication Server Location Information Service Configuration.

Now wait for the management store to replicate (thanks for the script Graham)


and log into a client to see the resulting network working :-)



Hopefully this gives enough information to get your LIS databases up to date with a Meraki network.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Tobie - excellent article - do you know how to find out all the Lync users connected to a particular access point (or subnet)? e.g. the Juniper House wifi in your example above? thanks
    Charles B.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Charles,
      Not having a Meraki to hand any more I'm not sure. I'm guessing you would be able to filter by destination IP to look for the front end pool for internal users or the Edge IP's for external users. If I get the chance to play with one again I'll see what I can do to help.

      Kindest regards
      Tobie

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  2. I was trying to find the algorithm Meraki is using, and came across this article, after Meraki TAC seems cannot help me. I have made this as a wishlist to Meraki and hope that we all will have a new feature in the dashboard.

    Many thanks!

    Robin

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    Replies
    1. Glad that you found it useful, it took a while to find someone in Meraki who understood what we needed.

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