Cisco - Jiri Brejcha

Unboxing Cisco Wireless CW9176I Wi-Fi 7 access point

Cisco’s Wi-Fi 7 access points introduced new packaging, replaced plastic bags with paper, and introduced new ordering process. This particular AP is the CW9176I-RTG SKU. The RTG stands for Ready To Go. It is build to stock which means super fast shipping, 1 AP per box packaging, and mounting brackets are included with no option to customise it. This -RTG option is perfect if you just need a single AP urgently to perform an “AP on a stick” site survey for example.

Now, if you want to minimise the cardboard volume and storage space, I highly recommend you use the CW9176I-CFG SKU. It allows you to order a 10-pack (that’s 10 APs per box) and fully customise mounting hardware or even opt out from it and use your existing brackets. The CFG part stands for configurable and it is build to your order.

Where in the SKU is the regulatory domain?

It’s gone, and it’s great! Cisco’s Wi-Fi 7 APs are designed for global use. The SKU is no longer assigned to any particular region or country. Simply order an AP. It will detect its location, and set the right country code.

Is this the cloud-managed or Catalyst controller managed model?

It is whatever you want it to be. After you plug it in, claim in in your Cisco Meraki Dashboard inventory, and it will run in Meraki mode. If you don’t claim it, it will discover your Catalyst 9800 controller, and become a Catalyst lightweight access point. Same SKU, same hardware, you choose how you manage it.

You can even switch between the two modes at any point in time with no TAC support whatsoever.

Each Wi-Fi 7 AP consumes a Unified License. This license is the same for both modes. It gives you rights to either cloud-manage the AP in Cisco Meraki Dashboard, or you can join it to Catalyst 9800 controller, and manage it by Catalyst Center.

What’s in the CW9176I-RTG box?

This is the individually packaged RTG SKU, 1 AP per box.

Note the paper wrap around the AP. No more plastic bags.

Underneath the AP are the instructions, bracket, and ceiling grid clip.

Detail of the low profile AIR-AP-BRACKET-1 mounting bracket and bolts.

Detail of the AIR-AP-T-RAIL-R ceiling grid mounting clip.

Finally, there is the AP.

All Cisco Wi-Fi 7 APs ship with a white Console port cover by default. Its purpose is to prevent installers from plugging the twisted pair cable carrying Ethernet to the Console port. The cover can be removed without any extra tools.

Note: For official Cisco guidance and information, please refer to the Cisco.com data sheet and deployment guide.

Unboxing external GPS antenna CW-ANT-GPS2-S-00 for Cisco CW9163E access point

Cisco CW9163E has an in-built GPS/GNSS antenna, and there is an option to attach an external one if signal strength is too weak. We are talking GPS only in this post. For Wi-Fi to work, this AP requires either omnidirectional dipoles or directional patch antenna.

Let’s peak inside the book.

There is a single hose clamp to attach the antenna to a pole, and the GPS antenna itself with directly attached cable.

Before you ask, the cable is about 3 meters long.

It’s now time to remove the GPS antenna port cap.

Detail for the GPS antenna port.

The rubber seal helps protect it from the weather.

Now, the last thing to deal with is how to mount the antenna. You can either use the 2 holes and screws (screws were not provided). Or run the provided hose clamp through the loop inside the antenna mount, pole mount the antenna, and point it towards the sky.

And here is our final setup before the AP gets mounted.

Note: For official Cisco guidance and information, please refer to the Cisco.com data sheet and deployment guide.

Unboxing Cisco CW9163E outdoor access point

CW9163E is Cisco’s outdoor Wi-Fi 6E access point. It comes in external antenna flavor only, so make sure you order either 4 omnidirectional dipoles (in some cases 2 might do just fine), or one directional patch antenna along with the AP itself.

It has built-in GPS antenna. If you expect poor GPS coverage, you can order an optional external GPS antenna.

Note that there are no plastic bags anymore.

Underneath the AP we find the mounting bracket, hose clamps, and other accessories.

Let’s look closely at the acessories.

Inside the little cardboard box is a cable gland and grounding pad.

6 GHz ports A and B, along with the GPS antenna connector live on the top side of the access point.

The bottom side hosts antenna ports C and D shared by 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios, reset button, Console RJ-45 port, and up to 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port.

No 6 GHz outdoors in the UK yet

Ofcom, the UK regulator, doesn’t permit 6 GHz use outdoors, at least not yet as of May 2025. The 6 GHz radio of the access point is disabled in software.

Unboxing Cisco CW-ANT-D1-NS-00 directional patch antenna for CW9163E AP

Cisco’s Wi-Fi 6E outdoor CW9163E access point requires an external antenna. It has no built-in Wi-Fi antenna. The antenna is a separate purchase and is not included.

You can choose between either omnidirectional dipoles (make sure you order 4 of them), which we covered here, or an external directional patch antenna CW-ANT-D1-NS-00. That’s what we are going to talk about today.

CW-ANT-D1-NS-00 is a 2×2 self-identifying antenna (SIA). The AP detects its presence, model and gain automatically. No more manual antenna configuration needed on your part anymore, yay!

Here is what’s in the box.

After opening all little paper bags you will find these accessories.

Coaxial cable length is about 60 cm and it uses N-type connectors. On the antenna side, all coax cables are permanently attached and are not removable.

The thickest part of the N-type connector measures about 2 cm.

Don’t judge my cable management, please. Also, colour of the AP and antenna is the usual “Cisco outdoor AP grey”. White balance in these two photos is slightly misleading, my bad.

The cable length allows you to achieve about 20 cm distance between the AP and the antenna.

Ultimately, this is how the final setup looks like.

Note: For official Cisco guidance and information, please refer to the Cisco.com data sheet and deployment guide

Unboxing Cisco CW-ANT-O1-NS-00 omnidirectional dipole antenna for CW9163E AP

Cisco’s Wi-Fi 6E outdoor CW9163E access point is an external antenna only model. It requires either 4 omnidirectional dipole antennas CW-ANT-O1-NS-00, or a directional CW-ANT-D1-NS-00 antenna (note the “D”) which we covered in this post.

The CW-ANT-O1-NS-00 antenna ships in a little recycled paper bag and it includes a single antenna. Please make sure you order this CW-ANT-O1-NS-00 SKU four times and connect antennas to all 4 N-type ports.

Note: If you have no plans to use 6 GHz, or can’t use 6 GHz outdoors in your country, scroll down. You might potentially get away with 2 antennas.

Here is a detail of the label.

If you are wondering what its dimensions are, here is a small UK banana for scale 😊

Joking aside, the antenna is about 23 cm long.

And its thickest point measures 2,8 cm.

Finally, here is the AP with all 4 antennas attached.

The whole set is about 65 cm tall.

These dipoles are self-identifying antennas (SIA) and the AP automatically detects their presence, model, and gain. In my setup I have 4 dipoles connected to the AP and since I am in the UK (where we don’t permit 6 GHz outdoor use yet), my 6 GHz radio has no channel assigned, and it is disabled in software on access points installed in Europe as of April 2025.

No plans for 6 GHz? No problem.

If your country has no plans to enable 6 GHz outdoors, you could only populate the bottom 2 antennas. These are connected to the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios. The top 2 N-type ports marked 6 GHz technically don’t need an antenna if you don’t plan to use them. But we must protect them from weather by N-type connector caps. Simply order CW-ACC-KIT1-00 accessory kit which includes 4 caps as well as other accessories.

Install the connector caps on 6 GHz ports A and B. Please note I am using compatible caps I already owned. The official Cisco ones might look slightly differently.

Let’s have a quick look from the front.

Just keep in mind that if you change your mind and want to use 6 GHz later, you will have to purchase the missing 2 antennas, remove the caps, and connect the additional antennas. So, expect some extra installation efforts. It might well make your life easier if you attach all 4 antennas from the get-go.

As expected, the AP will detect the bottom 2 antennas serving 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands but not the top two 6 GHz antennas.

From physical footprint perspective, CW9163E equipped with the bottom 2 antennas is nearly as tall as MR76/MR86 with all 4 antennas attached.

Note: For official Cisco guidance and information, please refer to the Cisco.com data sheet and deployment guide.

Incompatible power injector with Cisco Catalyst Wireless CW9166 Wi-Fi access point

Just a very quick reminder that if you power your CW AP using an incompatible 802.3at power injector, you will likely see the AP successfully boot up, but it disables its radios few seconds later. The result is no SSID put on the air.

What to look for in the logs?

If you console or SSH into the AP, you will see this error message. Followed by radio interfaces going down.

set_sys_cond_state: condition critical state 4

condition critical state 4 error message

That’s it. Use officially supported injectors, and save yourself from the trouble I ran into 😊

Convert Cisco Catalyst Wireless access point to Meraki cloud-managed mode

We have already converted a Cisco Meraki access point to Catalyst/DNA mode the other week.

Access point conversion from Catalyst/DNA mode (managed by Catalyst 9800 controller) to Meraki mode allows you to add a Catalyst Wireless AP to Cisco Meraki Dashboard, and fully monitor, and fully manage it from there.

Order the AP in the right mode

Order your access points in the right mode out of the box, and don’t worry about conversion. That’s the “-MR” SKU for cloud-management/SaaS model. If you wish to manage the APs by a Catalyst 9800 controller, simply find the right access point SKU and regulatory domain based on your coutry using this tool and reach out to your favourite Cisco Partner or distributor for a quote.

What do we need?

Catalyst Wireless CW9162I, CW9164I, CW9166I, CW9166D1, CW9163E, or any Wi-Fi 7 access point joined to a Catalyst 9800 series controller (hardware appliance, cloud instance, or virtual machine)
Cisco Meraki MR access point license

Let’s start the conversion

1. Make sure the access points you want to convert have successfully joined the Catalyst 9800 controller. Head over to Configuration > Wireless > Migrate to Meraki Management Mode.

2. Select one or more APs you wish to convert and click the Migrate to Meraki Management Mode button.

3. Wait for validation to complete. Click Next.

4. Tick Agree and continue and click Yes.

Take a deep breath and kick-start the process

5. Conversion has now finished. Note that each AP has a Cisco Serial Number and Meraki Serial Number. Copy the Meraki Serial Number.

6. While you are doing that, the AP rebooted and started the Meraki image.

AP has left the controller and is about to establish connectivity to Dashboard after reboot

During the boot process, the AP logs a message about the mode change.

Reset reason – AP converted to Meraki mode

And you will no longer have access to its Console port. If you connect a console cable, <Meraki> output will appear with no option to type any commands.

7. Copy the Meraki Serial Number and log in to Cisco Meraki Dashboard. Open Organization > Configure > Inventory. Click Add devices, and paste the Meraki Serial Number of the AP.

Add the AP by entering its Meraki Serial Number

8. From now on, the AP now behaves like any other Meraki cloud-managed access point. All monitoring and management features of the Dashboards are available. If you ever change your mind, and wish to convert it back to Catalyst/DNA mode, here is my step-by-step guide.

Useful WiFi Explorer Pro filters for finding rogue APs and APs with low minimum mandatory data rate

If you have not used WiFi Explorer before, get yourself a copy of the Pro version here. It is absolutely worth it and extremely useful tool if you have anything to do with Wi-Fi.

The Pro version (the Lite doesn’t) supports Filters. They allow you to filter scan results and get exactly the scan results you are interested in.

Find rogue access points

Let’s say you want to find APs that use other SSIDs than yours. This filter does just that. It shows all SSIDs other than CiscoLive or CiscoLive-WPA3. It excludes 2.4 GHz and U-NII-3 band – if we allow those for non-production use for example. Simply paste this string into the Filters text field in the top right-hand corner.

dot11.net.ssid !~ "CiscoLive" AND dot11.net.ssid !~ "CiscoLive-WPA3" AND dot11.net.band != 2.4 AND dot11.net.channel < 149

Find APs using low minimum mandatory data rate

Other times you might want to look for access points that have minimum mandatory data rate configured to low – by mistake or by choice. In this example, I am interested in APs broadcasting these 2 SSIDs and using minimum mandatory rate of 6 or lower.

dot11.net.min_basic_rate <= 6 AND dot11.net.ssid ~~ "CiscoLive" OR dot11.net.ssid ~~ "CiscoLive-WPA3"

Download the cheat sheet

We have only scratched the surface. You can do so much more with filters.

Intuitibits, the makers of WiFi Explorer, published a great one-pager documenting the syntax. Get yourself a copy.