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Neat Pad and Bar with Meraki access points

#networking

A company I'm working with is using a Neat Bar [A] and Neat Pad [A] for Zoom calling. They also use Meraki network devices for wireless (MR 42) and switching (MS 250).

As explained in the Neat documentation [A], the Neat Pad and Bar cannot continue through the setup screen when using Meraki devices with default options for DHCP.

In our environment, we have a wireless SSID that is set to bridge clients to a Wireless VLAN subnet. This SID is using a Pre-Shared Key (PSK), it's not hidden, and is using both 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands with band steering. The DHCP server is running on the Switch Virtual Interface (SVI) configured on the Wireless VLAN subnet.

When trying to connect the Neat Pad and Bar to this SSID, the setup screen allows them to connect, but it say that it's not connected to the internet. The workaround for this is to configure the DHCP options in the SVI to include an NTP time server IP.

The steps are as follows:

  1. Open the Meraki dashboard in a browser.

  2. Navigate to Switch > Routing & DHCP:

  3. Click on the row to open up the Switch Interface config:

  4. In the section “DHCP options”, click the “Add a DHCP option” button. Select “NTP Server (42)”. Copy/paste in one of the direct IPs from the NIST Internet Time Servers page: https://tf.nist.gov/tf-cgi/servers.cgi

After that, you might need to reboot the Neat devices, but the Neat Pad screen should say that the wireless connection has internet access and allow you to continue the setup.