Cisco’s Meraki Virtual MX is a virtual instance of the Meraki SD-WAN appliance. We liked the Meraki. The Wifi APs are a great feature. The dashboard is a simple interface and easy to learn. It features a single pane of glass for all the products you need to manage. Support is always great with Cisco.
The problem was when we had to assign a static IP for security reasons. It was lengthy and complex. Making changes to a WLAN is complicated. If you try to standardize or change your config, it disrupts your switches’ performance. Moreover, the wireless controller is out of date and has some bugs.
Despite being long-time Cisco users, we evaluated the Ruckus Wireless as an alternative in terms of price.
Ruckus Wireless is a wireless LAN data plane appliance in a virtualized form factor. It has awesome features about how their signaling works and devices. The devices are weather-resistant and work well even in harsh conditions. Ruckus mesh technology is their best feature.
Setting up and configuring it was easy. When you want to add an AP, it is a pretty straightforward plug-and-play system. The performance and configuration are very good. The AP is reliable, meaning you can have high-density wireless, scaling up easily. That being said, they could add hardware stratification. The solution is fairly stable and easy to scale.
Regarding the price, Ruckus is more affordable than Meraki.
About the downsides, onboarding BYOD can be cumbersome or downright impossible. Another downside is the support. They take forever to answer back and solve tickets.
Conclusions
Cisco has all the backup and support of a big brand name. We are Cisco users but Ruckus is a great and more affordable alternative to Meraki. Ruckus Wireless is a great WLAN solution, reasonably priced.
Hello community,
I work at a small tech services company and am currently researching firewalls.
What are the differences between Cisco Meraki MX67 and FortiGate 60? Which solution do you prefer?
Thank you for your help.
Hi,
I work as a Network and Telecommunications Manager at a retail company.
I'm looking for a product replacement and I'm currently exploring Mist AI and Cloud or Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN.
Which one would you recommend choosing and why?
Thanks in advance.
Senior Network Admin at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
Jun 2, 2022
Had so many problems with Meraki in the past 5 years. I wouldn't recommend them to anybody. The last problem was intermittent problems connecting to an SSID, the helpdesk answer was: "make the password less complex". It was passw0rd.
Roaming always seems to break whenever they do an update. One time it took more than a year to fix the issues, couldn't upgrade the firmware for more than a year. Every time I reported a problem, they wanted to upgrade our firmware, but they hadn't fixed the roaming problem.
Wifi works so much better now when we moved away from Meraki. Plus, we don't have to pay the license fee anymore.
Cisco’s Meraki Virtual MX is a virtual instance of the Meraki SD-WAN appliance. We liked the Meraki. The Wifi APs are a great feature. The dashboard is a simple interface and easy to learn. It features a single pane of glass for all the products you need to manage. Support is always great with Cisco.
The problem was when we had to assign a static IP for security reasons. It was lengthy and complex. Making changes to a WLAN is complicated. If you try to standardize or change your config, it disrupts your switches’ performance. Moreover, the wireless controller is out of date and has some bugs.
Despite being long-time Cisco users, we evaluated the Ruckus Wireless as an alternative in terms of price.
Ruckus Wireless is a wireless LAN data plane appliance in a virtualized form factor. It has awesome features about how their signaling works and devices. The devices are weather-resistant and work well even in harsh conditions. Ruckus mesh technology is their best feature.
Setting up and configuring it was easy. When you want to add an AP, it is a pretty straightforward plug-and-play system. The performance and configuration are very good. The AP is reliable, meaning you can have high-density wireless, scaling up easily. That being said, they could add hardware stratification. The solution is fairly stable and easy to scale.
Regarding the price, Ruckus is more affordable than Meraki.
About the downsides, onboarding BYOD can be cumbersome or downright impossible. Another downside is the support. They take forever to answer back and solve tickets.
Conclusions
Cisco has all the backup and support of a big brand name. We are Cisco users but Ruckus is a great and more affordable alternative to Meraki. Ruckus Wireless is a great WLAN solution, reasonably priced.