How AccessPoints are Defined by AirShield

Modified on Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 2:38 PM

In general an AccessPoint is considered to be a single device that provides 802.11 networking to a room, open area, closet, etc. These may be connected via Ethernet to an edge or core switch or act as 802.11 repeaters, relaying network traffic from one area to another. A typical AccessPoint with external antennas looks like this:

Image result for meraki access point

Each antenna supports one or more radios transmitting on approved frequencies, also known as channels, within the 2.4 GHz or 5GHz bands.

A Service Set Identifier (SSID) is a unique name given to a network. An AccessPoint radio may advertise multiple SSIDs (up to 32 in some cases). The internal radio advertising the SSID uses an IEEE-approved MAC Address, known as the Basic Service Set Identifier (BSSID). A group of BSSIDs advertising an ESSID make up the accessible network for clients to connect.

Users, for the most part, are unaware of the BSSID they are connected to and may roam from BSSID to BSSID as signal quality and load demands it.

AccessPoints in 802 Secure Console

When viewing the list of AccessPoints on the 802 Secure console you will notice a large number of BSSIDs with the same ESSID. These are the unique radio addresses as seen by the 802 Secure AirShield. Around every 1 to 2 minutes the AirShield will tell the Console of its observations including a list of AccessPoints and their details.

IMPORTANT: A BSSID may not be visible from some vendor console or management systems. In most cases a calculation is made based on the radio MAC address for each advertised network to generate the BSSID. Reversing this address to find the actual AccessPoint is different for each vendor.

Multiple AirShields

In some cases multiple AirShields may observe an AccessPoint. In this case the primary view will show the last reported AirShield and the details from each AirShield will be available from the History view on the AP Details page.