Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN Reviews

I love the ease of deployment and the dashboard. These are the the main selling points of this solution.

It improved the installation time. It's very easy to get an overview without the expensive monitoring software because you can get it more of less for free with the dashboard. You get a lot of insights out of the box.

It's performing well, really well. We don't have any issues. We only have issues if there is a lot of rogue APs in the neighborhood and that not Meraki's fault.

There are many improvements that can be made. Mainly in the radio parts, they need to include some more features but it is hard to say exactly what we want. We had have a few cases where we could not use Meraki because it could not do advanced routing features, and so on, but it is very unlikely that Meraki would include that in the next releases. We have tried to push it because we are quite a big reseller in the Nordic region.

I would say overall it's really stable. When they realize features, it looks like it is well tested and they don't just release them to release a new feature and if it's a better feature they write it as beta so please be careful.

The scalability is more or less endless. I have not seen problems with adding 100's or 1000's of devices.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

We always think it is best to consider:

• Management
• Price
• Including new technologies

The price can be negotiated.

For big enterprise, I would definitely use Meraki. They are doing something really special stuff.

Our primary use case is for business, the end within the business, no guests or anything like that. We use the on-prem deployment model of this solution. 

The most valuable feature is the stability. It works and doesn't stop.

In terms of improvement, we're waiting on is the new standard WiFi 6. That's really where the research comes into. With wifi coming out, we're going to refresh everything. Hence we're going to look at the top three players.

I'd like better integration with security providers. 

It is stable. We've never had any bugs. 

It's scalable. We have between 50-100 users in my company. The users are our general employees. 

We don't require any staff for maintenance. For the deployment, we required four staff members. We have plans for increasing usage. The idea is to double it in size with Wifi 6. 

We were in touch with technical support a while ago. They just said what was in the book.

We previously used Aruba Wireless. We switched because of the price. It wasn't my choice, it was my client's choice. 

The initial setup was complex. It took about 200 hours. 

Our deployment strategy was to get it all in and then get all hardware in, put one service layer at a time. When it's finished, disable all the old stuff. After migrating the clients, disable all the old stuff.

I reached out to Cisco for boilerplate plans and worked on their standard design for a smaller office.

After the third year, because it's Cisco, the prices go higher. 

My advice to someone considering this solution would be to use the white paper comparisons, they're excellent. Particularly not a newspaper review of a product, as it comes out of the box. That does nothing. But it has to really be an installation that is similar to yours. It might match the number of sites or match the number of consumers in the end but it has to be similar in some ways. Not a lab, a lab work doesn't tell you anything. That's like a practice run. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

• 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!

I've worked on this solution for a couple of clients who already had it deployed. It has many good features and good integration. This is more of a hybrid setup where the switch takes over a lot of responsibility depending upon what you have deployed. It takes a lot of control and allows for cloud-based management of your Wi-Fi network.

One of the key problems is that, similar to a solution like Ruckus, if you lose connectivity with the controller, your Wi-Fi network is immediately impacted and users are unable to connect to the network. It's a challenge because then your budget inflates as you have to invest in a high availability kind of solution and have more than one controller. If you are spread across a large area geographically, then you may want to have multiple controllers at different sites so that if one fails you always have a backup to go to and you're not dependent on the links that connect to your offices. It can become costly as a result. 

There is nothing much that can change but I believe the hardware could become more economical. The licensing part is okay, and compared to other cloud-managed Wi-Fi's, Meraki is well placed on the pricing, but the hardware costs a bomb. If they could reduce the price of the hardware, the access points, that would be a great benefit for them.

The solution is stable and more secure when you compare it to Ruckus because if you have an MX firewall, you automatically get the firewall features over your Wi-Fi as well. The outcome is that all the data passing through the Wi-Fi definitely passes through the firewall. 

Meraki is quite scalable. 

Thanks to my experience with Wi-Fi, I haven't needed tech support from Meraki. One good point about Meraki and Cisco overall would be the documentation. It's extremely comprehensive so that you don't need to call tech support unless you encounter a specific problem, and you can find most things by doing a Google search.

I believe the initial setup is pretty straightforward although I've never deployed the solution - I've managed it for clients. We currently have three companies that are using this product. From a maintenance perspective, it requires a couple of maintenance staff to keep a tab on the solution, depending upon your work environment. 

Licensing is on an annual basis and there is also the hardware inventory. If the firewall goes down, for example, that could cause a problem. The point of failure and the work involved around it makes it a more costly solution.

For anyone looking for a simple management solution in a geographically spread-out network, Meraki is a good bet compared to Ruckus. However, they lose points on the cost as well as on the complexity of its multiple-tiered structure, where you have an MX firewall or a switch, your Wi-Fi access points, and then the cloud. It's too much and could be as easy as having the cloud and access points, but the product has an additional tier integrated, which makes it somewhat complex.

I would place them at eight out of 10. 

We use the wireless network switches for wireless network communication as concerns our hotel. 

The solution should be more secure. 

It is overpriced and more expensive than Hauwei.

We've been using Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN for more than two years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have had no problems with the technical support.

Prior to going with the solution, we used Ruckus.

The installation is fine. The solution is easy to install.

It took under five minutes.

Installation can be done on one's own. 

The solution is overly expensive. 

I would recommend the solution to others, unless the price would be competitive. 

We make use of 50 to 100 Meraki units.

I like Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN, so I rate it as a six or seven out of ten. 

We are using Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN for enterprise access in our building.

I have been using Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN for approximately five years.

The stability of the Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is very good.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is a scalable solution.

We have approximately 300 people using this solution in my organization.

The technical support from Cisco is good, but they can improve themselves in some areas. Sometimes it takes a while to provide a solution or an answer to our problem.

The deployment of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN was simple. It took a couple of weeks to complete.

We have certified people that do the implementation of the solution.

The price of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is per unit and it has annual maintenance costs.

I rate Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN an eight out of ten.

We use Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN for enterprise wireless and hospitality wireless. We're using it to cater to all customer needs.

The cloud manageability feature is valuable. We can access it from anywhere. We don't have to get customers remote connections, we can simply log in using the internet, and they're easy to manage.

It would be better if they enable full integration with Cisco's cloud-based network in the next release. A couple of years back, we did an integration with Cisco Identity Services Engine. There we had some integration issues. Cisco had access in the portfolio, but Cisco Wireless wasn't fully compatible with that integration. If we sell Meraki, we can't promote some other Cisco products because there's a clash. 

I've been using Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN for around four years.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is a stable and reliable solution. We have a dedicated team to perform maintenance.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is scalable. We have some customers that own 100 branches and they're connected. There was no issue regarding scalability.

Cisco's technical support is good.

The initial setup is straightforward. It took us a few weeks to deploy, not much.

We implemented Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN as we're an integrator.

The price is on the high side when compared to Aruba. We pay for Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN on a yearly basis.

If you need a simple feature set, you can use Meraki basically without any issues.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN an eight.

We are a system integrator and this is one of the Wireless solutions that we implement for our customers.

The most valuable feature is cloud management.

The Meraki platform needs better on-premises management options.

I have been working with this specific product for three years, and more generally with Cisco for 20.

This solution is scalable and we haven't had any issues with it. I would say that it is for medium-sized and enterprise-level businesses.

Meraki Wireless LAN is a stable product.

We have dealt with Cisco's technical support in the past and we are satisfied with the service.

We have experience with similar products by other vendors such as Aruba and Arista, and we prefer products by Cisco.

The initial setup is very easy. The length of time required for deployment depends on the situation at the client's site, in terms of readiness. It will also vary depending on the number of switches and routers that are in-place or need to be installed.

Generally, the deployment will not take more than two hours.

This is a product that we recommend over other similar ones by other vendors.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.