Cisco Meraki Integration FAQ and Troubleshooting

This document provides answers to commonly asked questions about the NetBox Cisco Meraki integration.

General Questions

Q: Does the integration support multiple Meraki organizations?
A: Yes, to ingest data for multiple organizations, you can run separate integration instances with different configurations.

Q: Can NetBox push configurations to Meraki?
A: No. The integration is currently data-in only, synchronising from Meraki into NetBox.

Q: Is the integration free to use?
A: The Meraki integration is available with commercial editions of NetBox.

Q: Do I have to buy NetBox Assurance to use the NetBox Meraki integration?
A: Yes. The NetBox Meraki integration extracts and transforms the latest state from Cisco Meraki Dashboard which is sent to NetBox Assurance where users can control how it is ingested into NetBox.

Q: Which versions of NetBox are supported?
A: 4.2.3 and above.

Q: Which versions of Meraki Dashboard are supported?
A: This integration is built on the Cisco Meraki Dashboard API (v1).

Technical Questions

Q: What authentication methods does the integration support?
A: The integration supports API key authentication to Meraki Dashboard. You need to provide a valid Meraki API key and organization ID.

Q: How does the integration handle API rate limits?
A: The integration uses the Meraki SDK which automatically handles rate limiting and retry logic. The SDK includes built-in retry mechanisms with configurable timeouts and maximum retry attempts.

Q: How are site assignments determined for devices?
A: Devices are assigned to sites based on their networkId field from the Meraki organization devices. Each Meraki network becomes a NetBox site.

Q: What happens to WLANs when their serving devices are offline?
A: WLANs are processed independently of device status. The integration creates WLAN entities based on network SSID configurations, not just active devices.

Q: How does the integration handle duplicate WLANs?
A: The integration deduplicates WLANs based on unique combinations of (network_id, ssid_name). Each unique combination creates one NetBox WirelessLAN entity.

Q: What custom fields are required in NetBox?
A: The integration requires these custom fields:

• meraki_network_id (Site, Text)

Q: Which device types are supported?
A: The integration supports three Meraki device types:

• MR series (Wireless APs)
• MS series (Switches)
• MX series (Security Appliances)

Troubleshooting

Connection Issues

Problem: Connection to Meraki API fails with authentication errors
Solution:

• Verify API key is valid and has appropriate permissions
• Check if the organization ID is correct
• Ensure the API key hasn't expired
• Verify Meraki Dashboard API is accessible from your network

Problem: Authentication fails with "Invalid API key"
Solution:

• Verify the API key is correctly formatted
• Check if the key has the required permissions for the organization
• Ensure the key is not expired or revoked
• Verify the organization ID matches the key's access

Problem: API requests return 403 Forbidden
Solution:

• Check if the API key has sufficient permissions
• Verify the organization ID is correct
• Ensure the key has access to the specific organization
• Check if there are any IP restrictions on the API key

Common Error Messages

"❌ MERAKI_API_KEY must be provided in policy config"

• Add MERAKI_API_KEY to your policy configuration
• Verify the API key is valid and properly formatted

"❌ MERAKI_ORG_ID must be provided in policy config"

• Add MERAKI_ORG_ID to your policy configuration
• Verify the organization ID is correct