Meraki vs 5508s with 3702i APs

[Andy White]

Hello,

We are upgrading our WiFi and have a few proposals that have come in some with Meraki which we know little about and a more traditional inhouse one.

I wondered what the pros and cons were and why we woudl chose one over the other?

We will need a highly available WiFi network using ac (up to 1Gb APs) for our mobile work force.  We will need a very secure corperate network and a couple of guest networks.   Plus use mobile phones tablets etc.

Any opinions  

[Rasika Nayanajith]

If you need flexibility/feature customization & willing to manage on-premise then WLC /3702 option is preferred.

If you want cloud managed solution with less customization and standard features then Meraki option also would work.

HTH

Rasika

[J. Adams]

There are good online discussions providing more detailed pros/cons of each including TCO models but one item that you state jumps out at me is bandwidth required for highly available WiFi network.  In our large global enterprise, we have deployed autonomous and lightweight access points with and without controllers on-site across circuit types and sizes.  There have been many instances when the on-site controller and features such per user/SSID rate limiting and AVC were invaluable.  I appreciate the cases where having plug and play cloud based AP, switches, and routers may be a solution but I can also think of many more cases it is not and would rather have the controller and APs over the cloud based solution at this time.  You may be aware of this but just in case, Wave 2 access points should also have the ability to run controller lite code on the AP.  Regards.