Meru configuration, part 1

As promised, I am going to give the QuickPhones phone a shot with the Meru gear. But first, I need to get the gear set up.

A quick rundown of what my configuration will look like :
1 - Meru MC 500 controller running version 3.4-103 software
1 - Meru MN-AP320
1 - Meru MN-AP201RH

I powered up the unit, and plugged in to it via a USB->Serial dongle. As the instructions indicated, I set up the serial port to 115200,8,N,1. I watched as the controller booted some flavor of Linux, and then hung on the "Starting Meru 3.4-103 wireless LAN services ...". After sitting for a while, I figured something was wrong, so I power cycled the box to see if it would come up a little quicker. (It didn't.)

I figured there was something wrong with my unit, so I pulled up a text editor to start writing my blog entry about how much I would have loved to write the entry about the QuickPhones with Meru. While I was getting everything together, the console spit out an error message, and then prompted me for a login.

I went ahead and put the default admin/admin username and password and got the console prompt back. At the console prompt, I ran the "setup" process. After answering the normal questions (ip address, gateway, netmask, etc.) the unit asked if it could reboot. (So I let it. Shocking, huh?)

Fortunately, it rebooted a lot faster than the initial boot. After a minute, I was able to log in and was back at the command prompt.

Normally, I am the kind of person that hates to configure gear with the web interface. But, in this case I decided to make an exception since the goal is not to evaluate the Meru gear, but rather to see if the phone works better on it. I fired up Firefox, and hit the web page. At this point, I was informed that I needed to use Internet Expoliter to access the UI on the box. (As an aside, I am sure that the version of code I am using is older. But, I still have to say, REALLY!? *sigh*)

Since I am already inflicting punishment on myself, I figured I would give IE 8 x64 a shot. When I hit the web site, I was first told that the certificate on the unit was suspicious (which is normal on gear like this), and after telling IE it was okay to continue, I was prompted for the username and password.

The UI that was displayed is reasonably clean, but doesn't show any useful information initially. (Probably because I don't have any APs it can talk to.) So, I pulled out the AP201RH. The first thing I noticed is that the AP appeared to want power over ethernet (PoE). So, I tried plugging it in to port 2 on the controller in hopes that it would power on. But, it seems that either port 2 doesn't do PoE, or there is some configuration setting that I need to enable before it will do it. Again, since I really want to get to the QuickPhones testing, I just took the AP in to another room that had a PoE port that I knew would work.

I managed to get the AP201RH up and running easily enough. So I plugged in the AP-320 so I could get it configured and ready to rock. Unfortunately, the AP-320 is running a different version of code, and try as I might, I am unable to upgrade, or downgrade it. Since the controller sees the AP as an AP-100, I am guessing this is a good thing.

Unfortunately, this is a dead end for this effort. I'll have to see if I can track down my friend at Meru to see if I can get some help. (The gear I have is test gear, so I don't have a maintenance contract to get the latest versions of code.)

I hope to have more in the coming weeks, assuming I can reconnect with an old friend.