Meraki DataMagic - Client History
The Client History page shows which clients were connected to your Meraki networks, hour by hour. Each row is one client on one network for one hour: its MAC address, the device it connected through, its IP address and connection, how much data it sent and received, and when it was seen. Use it to find out where a device was connected and when, or how busy a network was over time.
Tip: large networks produce a great deal of client history. Start with a single network and a short time range, and widen them once you have found what you are looking for.
Choosing what to look at
The organization tree
The tree on the left chooses whose client history you see: everything under Home, one organization, one group of networks, or a single network. The chart and the table both follow your choice.
The timeline
The timeline across the top shows how much client history there is over time, and chooses the time range for the chart and the table below it. You can move along the timeline and zoom in or out. The buttons at the top right of the page control it:
- Follow now (the clock button) keeps the timeline on the most recent hours.
- The zoom buttons show a shorter or longer stretch of time.
- The scale sets how much time each bar covers: an hour, 4, 6 or 12 hours, or a day.
The chart
The chart shows how many clients were connected in each hour of the chosen time range, one bar per hour (coming in version 4.7). Hover over a bar to see the figures behind it. The small save icon at the top right of the chart saves the chart as an SVG file; it is separate from the Download button at the top of the page, which downloads the table. The Chart Settings drop-down at the top left of the page changes how the chart is drawn:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Data Labels | Shows or hides the figures on the bars. |
| Legends | Shows or hides the key to the colours. |
| View Mode | Chooses how each bar is split: by organization, by network (the default) or by network group. Time series overall shows all clients as a single bar. By aggregation type shows a bar for each aggregation type (SSID, switch port, named VLAN, adaptive policy group and recent device) side by side; every client counts in each type, so these bars are the same height (coming in version 4.7). |
| Results | Shows only the busiest 1, 10, 25 or 100 organizations, networks or network groups in the time range, or All of them. The default is 10, so a bar then counts only the clients of those shown. Results does not affect Time series overall, By aggregation type or the table (coming in version 4.7). |
The table
The table lists every client history row in the chosen time range, newest first, a page at a time. Choose how many rows to show per page, and move between pages, with the controls above it. Click a column heading to sort by that column, and use the filter button beside a heading to show only matching rows.
There are a lot of columns, so there are two ways to show just the ones you need:
- The Columns: buttons just above the table (All, Recent, Connection, Usage and Times) show one group of columns at a time. The client's MAC address stays visible whichever group you choose.
- The Columns drop-down at the top of the page shows or hides individual columns.
| Group | Column | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Always shown | Org, Group, Network | Where the client was. These appear when you have chosen something higher in the tree, such as a whole organization. The Meraki icon beside a network opens it in the Meraki dashboard. |
| Always shown | Client MAC | The client's MAC address. |
| Recent | Recent Device, Recent Device Serial | The Meraki device the client most recently connected through. |
| Connection | Network Meraki Id | The network's ID in Meraki. |
| Connection | IP Address | The client's IPv4 address, or its IPv6 address if it has no IPv4 address. |
| Connection | SSID, Switch Port | The wireless network a wireless client joined, or the switch port a wired client was plugged into. |
| Connection | Named VLAN, Adaptive Policy Group | The VLAN and adaptive policy group the client was in, where the network uses them. |
| Usage | Sent KB, Received KB, Total KB | How much data the client sent and received in that hour, in kilobytes. |
| Times | First Seen | When Meraki first saw the client on the network, which can be long before the hour of the row. |
| Times | Last Seen | When Meraki last saw the client, as at the time the hour was collected. |
| Times | Period Start, Period End | The hour the row is for. |
Tip: the copy button beside a MAC address, IP address, serial number or Meraki ID copies it to the clipboard.
Viewing a row
Select a row and press the blue View button at the top of the page, or double-click the row, to open its details in a pop-up. It shows the client's data usage for the hour, the hour itself, and how it was connected, followed by the client's details and the network, organization, group and device it was connected through. Refresh reloads the row, and Close (or the Escape key) closes the pop-up.
At the bottom, Last updated shows when the row was written (coming in version 4.7).
Downloading
The Download button at the top of the page saves the rows on the current page of the table as an Excel file. The file has every field of each row, not just the columns on screen. To download more rows at once, choose a larger page size first, up to 500 rows.
How client history is collected
DataMagic reads each network's clients from Meraki once an hour, after the hour has ended, and stores one row for each client seen.
- Every client is included, however many a network has in an hour (coming in version 4.7).
- If DataMagic could not collect an hour, for example while it could not reach Meraki, that hour is left empty, so it shows as a gap on the timeline and in the chart (coming in version 4.7).
