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If you compare the CISCO AP and Meraki AP,which AP's hardware is best?

Please give me any documents about it.

4 Replies 4

marce1000
VIP
VIP

 

  - The hardware quality is the same , main topics  here are  with cisco (+controller) : full local deployment for mission critical tasks and also ability to tweak advanced wireless parameters if needed.
     There is a good discussion in https://community.cisco.com/t5/wireless/cisco-vs-meraki-my-personal-opinion/td-p/3333428

 M.



-- Each morning when I wake up and look into the mirror I always say ' Why am I so brilliant ? '
    When the mirror will then always repond to me with ' The only thing that exceeds your brilliance is your beauty! '

Haydn Andrews
VIP Alumni
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The current generation of WIFI 6E APs and some WIFI 6 APs is the exact same hardware between Cisco and Meraki. And this will be the way going foward. 

The differences is software and comes down do you want on prem managed APs (Cisco) or cloud managed (Meraki).

Cisco is on a transition for feature parity between the two, but at moment you can tweek settings in the Cisco solution more than within Meraki. That being said 90-99% of users would be able to use either

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Rich R
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As Haydn says all the new APs can be used with either solution - exact same hardware.  It will come pre-installed with Catalyst or Meraki firmware depending on which part number you order but it can be switched between them as and when required.  This applies to all the new CW916x APs and will be the same with the CW917x APs due to be released sometime in the next few months.  For example:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/wireless/catalyst-9100ax-access-points/cat-9162-series-access-points-ds.html

Choice of management mode

The Catalyst 9162 Series can be managed either on-premises with Catalyst 9800 Series Wireless Controllers or cloud-managed through the Meraki Dashboard. It gives you the flexibility to deploy the access points in one management mode and shift to a different management mode in the future.

They are now "Cisco Wireless" APs which can be used with either management option so there is no hardware comparison, only the management option which works best for you.

JPavonM
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VIP

As previously said, hardware is the same for all of them (even between Cisco and other vendors) but the only difference is in the software.

Personally, I do prefer to have under control all features, and being able to dig into logs while debugging.

I don't like the Meraki way where you have no control over teh full configurations, and logs are a waste of time, so you need to trust on the support engineer when troubleshooting, something I'm not really confident.

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