Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN Reviews

There are a variety of use cases. It is being used in a community center, a school, a gymnasium, and a youth center.

It's a combination of constituents. We have teachers, employees/staff, students, parents, and visitors. We have many different users.

The most valuable features are the multiple types of user groupings and access management. For example: what, when, how long for, what is the performance, and what device are they using are all groupings.

Some of the built-in capabilities need to be improved. The radius capabilities for filtering by MAC address, some of the group-based policy management, even though they have more flexibility.

They need a better reading of device TACs, which are terminal equipment codes.

When you read a MAC address or a serial number, you can detect if it's an iOS or an Android device. Specifically, within the Android world, it can detect if it's a Samsung, an Acer, or if it's a Dell. In the Apple world, you can detect if it's iOS, iPhone, or an iPad.

Their TAC reading and interpretation capability are not as effective. For example, they may be reading a MAC address and reporting it as an iPhone, but it may be a Samsung. It's not just iPhone and iPad confusion, but iPhone and Android cross confusion.

There is a processing limitation when you have multiple SSIDs, above three or four.

I have been working with this solution for three years.

We are working with the original version of Meraki, not the latest version.

In terms of stability, it's relatively straightforward.

It's a scalable solution. It's pretty good.

We have never had to contact technical support.

We work with Meraki, Eero, and Ubiquiti.

The initial setup is relatively straightforward. It's literally a plug-and-play, once you set up on the portal. I would be stretching to find an issue.

Anything that is common to all of the access points is the same, You have to run the cables. Once you have done the Delta it's probably a couple of days to deploy.

It depends on what you want to configure or the level of configuration complexity. We have, for example, access points in a specific location that are broadcasting on certain SSIDs and providing access to only certain users or certain devices, and for specific services which have to be configured.  

If you generate an existing configuration, you can just plug it in and it will boot. If however, it requires a specific configuration, it will take time to configure the specific set of requirements.

We had a deal and we went for it. If I had to go for it today, I would reconsider, unless I get more competitive pricing. The gap in terms of performance, quality, features, and functionality has decreased significantly compared to what it was five years ago. 

Now they have much more. They used to be a startup and they did pretty well. They got into growth mode, VCs pushed them to grow and they started developing features and functionality. 

Amazon bought them. Now that Amazon has its backing, they should be able to grow and improve features, which is going to put them on a similar pedestal as a Cisco Meraki, and the same for Ubiquity. But those are just nuances. 

Today, it would be harder for me to push for Cisco Meraki.

Their biggest challenge is cost. Since it's been acquired by Cisco, it's an even higher cost.

If they are going for the long run it's good, but if you go too long, there is a cost component to consider and figure out, because the cost is something that is coming down with a lot of new solutions.

I would rate Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN a nine out of ten.

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.

The main use case is as an enterprise network for the user working in the office and for guests.

This solution has provided reliability and a good price for my organization.

The most valuable feature is wireless connectivity.

I've been using this solution for two to three years.

This is a scalable solution.

The quality of technical support varies, sometimes it's very good, sometimes not.

I also work with Cisco Wireless LAN. We choose to work with Meraki because we are familiar with the technology from selling the solution.

The initial setup is quite straightforward. In general, setup should not take more than one or two days.

Licensing is available on a yearly basis. A higher subscription fee may be necessary if extra features are required.

Cisco Meraki is quite reliable and provides good support, on a par with other brands. It also requires less time to implement and maintain the network, and it can save running and operating costs. I would rate this solution as seven out of ten.

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!

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.