Device-to-Cloud - Meraki Cloud Communications Tunnel
For a Meraki hardware device to communicate with the cloud, Meraki leverages a lightweight encrypted tunnel using AES256 encryption while management data is in transit. Within the tunnel itself, Meraki leverages HTTPS and Protocol Buffers for a secure and efficient solution, limited to 1 kbps per device when the device is not being actively managed.
Cloud Communications Process
Meraki uses an event-driven Remote Procedure Call (RPC) engine for Meraki devices to communicate to the Meraki dashboard and for Meraki servers to send and receive data. Meraki hardware devices act as the server/receiver as the Meraki cloud initiates calls to the devices for data collection and configuration deployment. Because the cloud infrastructure is the initiator, configurations can be executed in the cloud before the devices are actually online, or even physically deployed.
In the event of cloud connectivity loss (which is most commonly caused by a local ISP or connection failure), the Meraki hardware device will continue to run with its last known configuration until cloud connectivity is restored.