Cisco vs Meraki, my personal opinion

[patoberli]

Hi all

Today I received my very first Meraki MR33 AP, after having used Cisco APs since the AP 1230 model. I have to say, I'm pleasantly surprised about the hardware quality of the Meraki and I think Cisco could learn/adapt a thing or two from Meraki here. I haven't yet booted it up, so I can't comment on the software side.

I also know that Cisco models are more Enterprise customer targeted, while Meraki is more into the SMB market, but now with Mobility Express, I think those lines disappear somewhat.

So, why do I write this post? I wanted to share what I found really pleasant about the Meraki.

The Meraki MR33 is around half the size and thickness of an AP2800, more like in a rectangular shape, compared to the square Cisco. The MR33 is of (much) lower 802.11ac speed than the AP2800, so that's probably a reason for the smaller size.

The wall bracket of the MR33 is really nice! It contains a tiny water ruler, so you can correctly mount it to the wall. It also has a cardboard paper, showing a description to all the possible mounting holes and variants.

It's also really easy to attach, unlike some of the Cisco brackets, which can be a real pita. It offers a way to put a screw into the AP to saveguard it, but there isn't a way for a safety lock.

Also very nice, the package also contains all needed screws, for all mounting variants (as far as I can tell), unlike my last few Cisco APs.

The LED of the AP is on the bottom and small, this can have positive and negative effects.

Anyway, I think I really like this mounting bracket and would wish that Cisco could improve theirs a little bit.

Thanks for reading

Patrick

[patoberli]

Yeah that Dashboard Disconnection is a still open bug with Meraki. Luckily
the AP still works, even if it shows as offline on the dashboard. We are
also currently awaiting for a fixed firmware.

[Leo Laohoo]

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@ajc wrote:

AP's still using the default 6.28.5x.X

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This is a bug since the time the 2800/3800 was released.  We found out ourselves that this IP address is based on the MAC address of the AP.  

We use a pair of InfoBlox as our DHCP server.  We found out that we will hit this 6.0.0.0/8 bug if we point to the virtual IP address of the DHCP server.  The fix was to point to the physical IP address of each DHCP server.  

According to TAC, the APs prancing around with 6.0.0.0/8 IP address is not a bug.  

[JyrkiHalonen]

I think Meraki is good option for small / medium branch and campus networks

[JPavonM]

Meraki is all about marketing, like having 9Gbps on the APs. Plug 'n Play is not all enterprise users need (if it works properly out-opf the box, becuase you can spend hours trying to change mgmt VLAN on switches until you reach to a solution).

After many years working with Meraki and Cisco, with all the portfolio, I'm very dissappointed by the fact that every "advanced feature" you want to configure on the Merakis, you need to open a support case to enable it (disable LLDP/CDP per port in switch? Come on), and only sometimes they provide you with a way to configure it by yourself enabling the feature in the dashboard (802.11w on APs for example).

If Cisco wants to place this solution as enterprise they should provide more advanced features like other cloud solutions in this market.

[Scott Fella]

There will always be a divide between, ease of use vs I want to have all the knobs.  This has always been the case, but I will be honest, not having to configure a lot of "things" is great.  I use a Meraki MX and MS as my primary devices at home.  I also do have some Meraki AP's but I use the 9800's now, just because I like all the knobs when it comes down to wireless.  I do have some IOS switches also, but I use that for testing.  I onboarded my 9300's to the Meraki dashboard just to have visibility, even though its monitor only.  It's nice because I can do that in Prod, have certain folks have monitor access so they can look at port info.  

[j.hammel]

Very well said, as always, Scott Fella!

We're still in the process of swapping out around 300 Cisco APs enterprise-wide with Meraki. In one location, 4 floor building, we've replaced over 40 Cisco APs with Merakis, putting each Meraki AP in the exact same locations as it's Cisco predecessor. Every single wireless issue (customer complaints, mind you) have all gone away. We went with the deployment plan of letting the APs out of box configuration ride for a week or two before making changes and, now 6 months later, we've made zero changes to the wireless settings on any of the APs - they just work and they work GREAT. From a management labor perspective this is a thing of beauty.

The single pane of glass with the Meraki dashboard versus Cisco's controller GUI/ISE GUI/Prime Infrastructure GUI for troubleshooting is also a thing of beauty and, if I might say so, much more intuitive than the several Cisco GUIs.

These are my personal experiences, observations, and opinions so please don't flame me too hard.

Cheers...

[Scott Fella]

Especially if you are a partner/consultant, you need to look at the customer knowledge and really are they staffed.  Simple works, its like any other services you own, you don't want to tinker with it once its working.  When I was working for CDW and my customers were wireless nerd and already new Cisco wireless, sure.... upgrade to Cisco wireless.  If a customer wanted to replace a very old solution and didn't have any wireless expertise, then sell them a solution that has minimal knobs, they can monitor from their cell phone and has a GUI that provides them with the simple necessities.  Where I work now, it's all Cisco and that is why I still use my home lab a lot.  My family knows the SSID to our Meraki ap just in case the Cisco wireless goes down, due to me tinkering:)  One thing that is cool is upgrades... just select the device(s), the image and schedule it.  Faster than upgrading my 3850's or 9300's even using DNAc.  I'm old school, so I have been working with access points since vxworks and grew up loving all the features and commands you can run from the cli.  I can see how the new generation will prefer the GUI over cli, its just a matter of time.

*** I still like the having all the adjustment knobs ***