Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN Reviews

I use it both at my home office, and we just installed it for one of our clients with about 11 different units in their building. We have been pretty impressed with it.

It has improved our organization immensely. We were using:

1. Not enough access points at one of my clients. They did not have enough.
2. They were using Ubiquiti, which was getting overloaded with traffic. Therefore, it has been a big speed improvement, as well as in coverage.

I find it very easy to manage because of the cloud management, so I can update all my buildings at once and see all of my clients from one spot. That is probably one of my favorite features, as well as it has good security with its Layer 7 protections. It has a lot of overall functionality.

At this price point, I would not mind seeing a four-way channel, instead of a 3x3 or a 4x4, like they do in the Cisco Aironet system with their other brand. For the same price point in this other Cisco brand, it is a lot cheaper, and you can get a slightly better throughput than you can with these. It does not have the cloud-base. This would be something that I would like to see, and they do have it in their bigger units, just not at the price point we were at for the MR 42s.

So far, there have not been any issues. 

The only ones that we did have were with some wiring in the building. 

The products were fine. The only time they have gone down is when they first had to do firmware updates. It has only been three weeks, but so far, they have worked very well.

I have not had any issues with scalability. If we need any more, it is literally just plug and play. It will immediately go in the network, because it is cloud-based. Everything from the network is on the cloud, so it just pushes right into the new device.

I have not yet talked to technical support. 

I talk to our rep if I have any questions because I have a direct Cisco rep.

We had Ubiquiti UniFi and the standard APs. They were not the ACs; they were the standard APs. Their coverage was always rough. We had a lot of dropouts due to speed issues, and this particular client of mine was putting in a new system in their building, and we knew this was going to push the WiFi really hard. Therefore, we knew we would have to upgrade it when we put the system in.

It was very straightforward. I did all the setup on it.

If you are wondering if Meraki can work for you, contact one of their representatives because they will do onsite trials where you can set up their system. If it does not work, you can send it back to them for no charge.

We were looking at improving the system that we currently had with Ubiquiti. We also did consider Ruckus and Cisco (the standard Cisco units). 

The reason I went with Meraki was mainly for its ease of setup and control of multiple locations, which this client has. It will allow me to integrate another system very quickly, as we continue expanding for them. Being an offsite vendor, and having remote access into it, the simplicity of that made a big difference in choosing their system.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: The device needs to hold up to what they are telling me it can do. I want to see good throughput from it, as well as that it has security and protection. 

Usability is a big one. How simple it is, easy it is to set up, use, and for the client to understand. Finally, it would be the technical support. They have to have a good technical support base.

The dashboard to keep track of 30 or so APs, switches, routers and logs, is invaluable. I liked the UX on this.

Notifications (minus the techno-speak so it's obvious what the problem is) help us respond to access points down or rogue access points attempting connections.

Tracking the usage of staff, access points, switches and routers becomes an insanely easy thing and so do producing reports for your Exec team.

Splash screens for T&C sign off by users are very easy to implement - it takes about 30 seconds to put a splash screen up. RADIUS and SSO are possible with similar ease.

Networks can be segmented into SSIDs very easily for those needing to provided users, office, POS, Events, etc, with seperated access. You can then monitor the usage down to a single MAC address for great granularity.

Reporting is easy - press two buttons et viola!

It's cut down the amount of time administering an expansive WiFi network spread over 43 acres.

We can easily monitor the up/down time so establishing KPIs and SLAs for the IT department becomes something attainable.

Adding APs is a very simple process. Plug in. Turn on. Meshes with the existing network. In an emergency, almost anyone can do it.

The error logs need to be much more comprehensive.

4 years

There can be problems if using older POS devices, WiFi APs, and you have a lot of people with mobiles around. So, say, a large event. The mix of signals can kill the WiFi APs and then you are left hard wiring "mobile" tills. Be aware if you're carrying old equipment.

Good.

Very good. Some times the odd problem may drag and require a dog-with-a-bone approach but that's the same everywhere.

Negotiate the deal put in front of you!

The Dashboard, with its centralized "cloud" interface is the most valuable feature of Meraki. If you are a smaller organization, have a small IT staff, and/or basic wireless needs Meraki provides the perfect solution. That is not to say that larger more educated organizations might not also find Meraki to be a great fit.

We use Meraki as a managed service provider for several clients that found the product and price a fit for their organization.

One of the virtues of the product could possibly be viewed as an achilles heel. The product is straightforward and does not have lots of features and fine tuning available vendors such as Cisco and Aruba. Some may be available when unlocked by Meraki TAC, but the product is not as feature rich as non-cloud offerings. This may be viewed as a positive by many users that do not want the complexity that comes with the extra features.

I have been certified and used this product for 3 years.

Very few issues. TAC works well with standard requests. If one needs something very advanced and rarely needed the TAC has difficulty escalating quickly.

The product is completely stable in our implementations.

The Meraki products scale quite well by allowing multiple organization with subdivisions of "networks" APs can be added to networks and tagged with other information as well. I would say that it works best for organizations with many diverse locations with smaller numbers of APs.

I would say that customer service is an 8/10

For basic technical support I give a 9/10. Once in the BETA program Irate Meraki a 10/10. The area in between basic support and "white glove" BETA program support is a little rough as I think most Meraki users keep things simple.

My company implements Cisco and Meraki and are certified for both. As I am also Aruba certified we occasionally service Aruba implementations.

Setup is very straightforward. The GUI is very intuitive.

We are the vendor doing the implementation and often maintenance/monitoring.

Pricing is directly tied to licensing. Longer terms are a better value than shorter ones, but the customer needs to determine which options is best.

yes we evaluated all the competition.

Cloud networking is perfect, I can manage and monitor all the clients of my network whenever I want and wherever I am.

The Layer-7 capability let me control traffic and block unwanted services.

Although Layer-7 helps, it could still be improved.

We had no issues with the deployment.

We had no issues with its stability.

We have had no issues scaling.

Meraki support is really good.

We also use Meraki MR and Aerohive devices.

Meraki setup is easy.

Both Meraki and Aerohive are good products, and I prefer Meraki. I work with Meraki products in production. Meraki are more intuitive than Aerohive.

• Centralized management
• Easily configurable

We implemented Meraki APs across our 5 offices in USA, UK, and India, and we can manage all of them from one dashboard. We have great metrics for bandwidth usage, easily finding out who is downloading movies. ;-)

Using Radius server for user authentication is very simple to configure, creating new SSID, and it has a great alerting system.

2 years

Deployment is very simple- just add the device to your dashboard, connect to the network, and it will automatically connect, update firmware, and update configuration to match with your others APs.

Nope

No

10

10, to get help you can open the case or just call them directly, give them your customer ID and boom, you are talking to the tech who can see all your devices.

Aruba, Ruckus - they are ok, but you need to spend more time to configure and their support is not even close to Meraki.

Can't be more simple

In-house

I think the Meraki APs are very cheap, I am using them even at home.

Don't waste time and money for the other solutions, only Meraki!

The management console is valuable. It helps manage everything.

The solution is limited to Meraki products. It does not extend to Catalyst products. Our customers have a mixture of Catalyst and Meraki products. They cannot manage Catalyst products. Cisco Meraki must improve the integration between its own family of products. It is a disadvantage.

I have been using the solution for two to three years.

The tool is stable. It is quite good.

We work with products like Ruckus, ExtremeCloud, and Aruba Central. Cisco Meraki is easier to deploy than other tools. Cisco Meraki supports both wireless products and switches.

For some customers, Cisco is not the first choice when it comes to pricing. The solution is pretty expensive.

I am a reseller. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

The cost for the solution's license could be better.

We have used the solution for seven years.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution. We had 50 solution users in our organization.

The solution's technical support service is good.

Positive

One executive is required for the solution's maintenance.

It is an expensive solution. There are additional costs apart from standard licenses as well.

It is a good product. I recommend it to others and rate it as a nine.

We use Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN for the wireless network connection inside the company.

The most valuable feature of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is that it is fast and does the job.

The initial setup of the solution can be improved and made easier.

My company has been using Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN for three years.

I rate Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN a ten out of ten for stability.

I rate Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN a ten out of ten for scalability. 2000 people are using Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN in our company.

The initial setup is complex according to me. We require 12 people to deploy and maintain Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN was implemented through an in-house technical person.

Users have to pay a yearly license fee for the solution. The pricing of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is good.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is a very good tool that users can use without problems.

Overall, I rate Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN a ten out of ten.