Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN Reviews

Cisco uses DNS for registration and similar functions, just like other manufacturers. The three-day UC protocol chipset from Cisco doesn't offer much differentiation. In contrast, other solutions provide more detailed graphical interfaces and attractive features in Policy Manager. For example, combining Aruba with ClearPass offers better positioning due to NAC and other functionalities. 

The multi-tenant solution needs improvement, especially in terms of speed. While it works, the graphics and call management could be better; sometimes, significant enhancements are needed.

When it comes to cloud solutions, Cisco has an edge over Aruba. Cisco’s LAN solutions benefit from open APIs, whereas Aruba’s offerings are more closed off. Cisco allows for more concurrent sessions and better bandwidth efficiency. 

They need to develop a cybersecurity solution beyond virtual machines and concurrent sessions. The pricing model should reflect a more comprehensive approach. It’s important to consider different factors and not rely on traditional metrics. 

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

Cisco provides 24/7 support, similar to Aruba. However, support is not up to par if you're referring to Stream. While you might encounter junior-level support at times, the overall service is reliable and aimed at addressing issues effectively.

Positive

It's about the applications and the ability to control radio settings and monitor signal quality. The radio performance may not be the strongest when working with Cisco Meraki in telephony and complex IP environments. In my experience, Ruckus is the best in radio signaling, followed by Aruba and Cisco.

Aruba and Cisco offer similar levels of encryption protection. Regarding cybersecurity, Aruba tends to outperform Cisco, particularly in NAC solutions. Aruba provides a more effective policy management solution than Cisco, making its policy manager superior.

The initial setup can be complex because it involves a CA provided by Aruba and integrated with Aruba ClearPass. With this CA, you can generate certificates, which are then downloaded to devices and users. This approach differs from others in its setup and management processes.

Cisco had a significant share of the market, but it's lost some of it. It initially led in LAN, but now it faces strong competition. Fortinet has become a major competitor in Spain, particularly in terms of pricing, making it attractive across various industries.

Cisco is a bit pricey and has lost ground in LAN applications and policy management. When combining Cisco with Forescout and Aruba, Forescout is superior to Aruba and Cisco in terms of NAC, control, and office environments. However, Aruba performs better than Cisco in control and office settings. Cisco's use of RADIUS can be quite complex to maintain and install.

If customers have strong radio performance and robust network access control, Cisco is a strong choice for connectivity and straightforward deployment. However, if a customer wants a comprehensive solution that includes security, scalability, and a user-friendly interface, they should consider competitors who offer a more global solution.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

These switches are part of our wireless network infrastructure. I have implemented them at 15 or 16 locations, each with between one and seven access points (APs).  

The emailing of statuses is the most valuable feature. For example, if you lose power to the building or you lose your internet connection, you get an email to explain that it has happened. This gives you the opportunity, even in the middle of the night, to be en route to solve the problem before the office even opens up.

They provide good visibility on what's going on.

The annual maintenance is something that needs to be changed.

I have been using Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN products for ten years.

These switches are very stable.

The technical support is very good. They are responsible and knowledgeable. On the Meraki side, you get through right away, whereas, on the Cisco side, you put in a call, and then it is difficult to predict when they will return it.

I have a large number of Meraki Wireless LAN switches including MR12, MR16, MR32, MR42, and MR46 models. I also use other Meraki equipment within our infrastructure.

These switches are very easy to set up, and it is also very easy to upgrade the firmware.

These units cost between $800 and $900 per device and on top of that, you have to pay yearly fees for maintenance. The annual maintenance costs about $75 per year, which is why we are moving away from this solution.

We are moving to another line of products because of the yearly maintenance fee.

We will be implementing Fortinet products in our infrastructure, with FortiAPs and our wireless access points. The speed of the FortiAP is triple that of my Meraki MR, and the purchase price is $500 versus $900. The is no annual maintenance fee on the FortiAP.

Fortinet is up and coming and on the leading edge right now.

In summary, this is a good product but we're moving away from Meraki because we no longer want to pay annual maintenance fees.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our use case is remote clinics. We have over 40 remote clinics, and we even use it in our mobile vans or buses for providing free medical to the homeless and those in need. 

We have a hybrid type infrastructure. We have Cisco as well as Aruba, but from the wireless perspective, it is all Aruba due to security and costs. Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is deployed in a data center. We have our own infrastructure because of HIPAA compliance and other regulations. When going into the cloud, you don't know who is managing and whether they properly bedded in terms of sensitive, classified, and not classified information or data.

I also use it in my home. I have a cloud in my garage. I have converged network storage and everything else in my garage. My garage is a data center, and I consider it a cloud. I am using the latest version of this solution.

The ability to manage it remotely is the most valuable. If it has an internet connection, you can get to it. It is a great product for remote clinics. We kind of thought about doing this kind of standalone technology. 

Meraki is easy to manage. From a management perspective, it is the easiest to use, especially in the cloud. I like Meraki. I even have it in my home.

I would like to see more cybersecurity. I would like the ability to go in and enhance security. Because WPA2 is becoming obsolete, many devices are now WPA3, but the challenge is that a lot of devices are not yet there. 

I would like to be able to go in and do monitoring, similar to ASPM. ASPM has the ability to monitor who's joining and who's active. It supports two-step monitoring. The stability of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN can also be improved.

I have been using this solution since it came out. 

Its stability could be improved.

It has scalability. It can be scaled depending on your business needs.

Cisco support is amazing. You get what you pay for. I did a network for the border patrol, and we used Cisco and another product called Antera. From the Cisco perspective, we were able to resolve any issues relating to ring networks, but for Antera, we had to rely on somebody from Taiwan, which was a challenge.

Its initial setup is straightforward. We do wireless on all the access points.

We do a three-year or five-year license and support. Its price could be better, but overall, we get competitive prices.

A lot of times, Cisco puts itself out of range, especially with Meraki. I've dealt with a lot of business development from Cisco, and they have always been accommodating, especially in dealing with hospitals or government. There is also a right time to buy it. July is when they are eager to sell a lot of things because that is the end of their calendar year.

I would recommend this solution if it is right for your environment. I would rate Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN a nine out of ten. It is great, but it has room for improvement.

We use the solution for user-end connectivity. 

The tool's most valuable feature is report generation. Its dashboard helps me a lot with user analytics.

Despite being enabled, I've encountered an issue where the alert main dashboard fails to detect when any of the devices go down. Hence, the tool's notification feature should improve. We have also faced issues with integration. 

I have been using the product for five years. 

I rate the product's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN's scalability a nine out of ten. My company has three users. 

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN's tech support is problematic and takes time to respond. We don't even have contact numbers. 

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN's deployment is simple. 

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN's pricing is high. 

I rate the product a nine out of ten. 

We use the product to manage three SSIDs catering to different network traffic.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN has a valuable cloud management feature. It is easy to manage and monitor cloud activities. It enables quick deployment within all branches for the users. It provides great performance even in 0℃ temperatures in some places.

In some cases, they could include enhanced features in the product, such as a firewall console and traffic analysis.

We have been using Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN for three years.

We encounter some issues related to DNS resolution once or twice a year. However, the stability works fine for almost 99% of the time.

The platform is easy and quick to scale. We can add up devices on SSIDs for every configuration or node.

We never contacted Cisco's technical support team directly. We receive services from an authorized partner.

We previously used Fortinet APs integrated with their UTM solution for security. It provides an efficient integration.

It is easy to set up, and we take assistance from a third-party engineer to execute the process. It takes a few hours to complete.

We take help from contractors. They assist us with any queries during implementation.

Cisco Meraki Wireless provides 20 ports and other components like switches at half the price of Aruba HP for the same features.

The platform is expensive. Its licenses for 20 ports cost around $1000, including one year of support services.

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

We have been using the latest versions of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN because we were deploying them in a new restaurant, we had all new solutions. The only difference was that because of COVID everyone has devices on backorder and we had to compare different Meraki devices. We had to redesign our plans based on what was in stock in the wholesaler inventory. They were all enterprise-level Meraki devices.

The deployment is on-premise but we manage the solution from the cloud.

The owner of the restaurant where Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN was implemented wanted to receive very detailed analytics and metrics based on the customer traffic that he would have. We wanted to capture the information from the customers either walking outside of the restaurant or enjoying the food inside, then adjust his marketing accordingly.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN has improved our organization by providing us with a sense of security. When anyone is connected wirelessly, you're not going to get compromised. You're not going to receive a bunch of pop-up ads, and the beneficial functionality of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN has been great. It has strong encryption and since my customer has a fast internet speed, they have good wireless speed.  The owner was extremely happy with the solution, not only the functionality, the daily use, but the analytics and metrics that he wanted were available.

The settings of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN can be very granular. You can lock down and block devices with the controls. For example, we have four different wireless settings, such as guest, employee, security, and backup. For example, the settings for the employees, if they use laptops, they're required to have certain settings, such as an antivirus installed. If they do not then Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN will not let them connect. This is very good protection because the network works on the bringing your own device(BYOD) principle. It's a BYOD environment now, and you also don't want them to bring infection into the environment because these people are connecting to the LAN via wireless connections. We have to be careful because we're managing it, we have to be very strict with regards to the rules and policies.

The way Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN groups certain things, as far as the devices for either monitoring and or configuring them should be done better. They should be grouped a little bit differently because if I want to configure something, a different setting on an SSID, I have to go to their specific area where I would have thought it should be clumped as a dropdown menu in another area.

It would be a benefit for Cisco to make an application for mobile devices. For example, an Apple or Android application for either a smartphone or a tablet. It would be useful to log in and use the dashboards to have a central control panel. It could be used to allow alerts to be received quickly if they went to mobiles devices. 10 times out of 10, you will have access to your phone before you have any other device on you. For example, one of the managed services that I use is Continuum which was purchased by ConnectWise making it a ConnectWise solution. They have an application for alerts that I can click on, and it will open the application on my phone. I can go in and see the alerts and trouble tickets and receive information, such as which client it is, which computer, server, or laptop. At that point, I can either click on another link and remote into it, or I can call the customer and notify them of the alert and that they could experience some delay or lag or problem with the internet connection because of their network card on their laptop. I do not have time to sit in front of the dashboard and if the alerts could be managed from a mobile device that would be a big help. 

You could spend all day looking at the bandwidth, or who is potentially looking at what in the network. Once you know what to lock down from the users, such as social media sites. If you have the employees on a separate wireless network, you can lock down all social media, to where they have no access to the social media. Additionally, you can block eBay, or anywhere you can purchase from, no porn, no adult content, it works very well wirelessly. It is a good solution.

I am not the first to think about additional features or improvements. They most likely have a lot of features in the works. Since I have many clients now I'll subscript to their next newsletter that they put out. They may have a mobile application coming out in the near future.

I have used Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN for approximately 10 years.

I have not had any issues with the stability of the Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN. I am extremely satisfied with its performance and quality.

The stability of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN has been great. I am highly satisfied.

I have contacted the support from Cisco. Recently I couldn't find where to do something on one of the main Cisco switches. It was a PoE switch, and I sent an email out to the support at approximately 10:00 and I received an email response early morning hours at approximately 5:00. I was very happy. They asked me a couple of questions, and then when I tried what they'd suggested that I should try, it worked. It was only one little setting that I missed, that I didn't check, and everything came up fine. Then I replied to the email, and they closed the ticket.

I'm very happy with their support. Additionally, they said in the email, if I have a critical issue that needs a more immediate response we can call a number to receive immediate support. I thought this was great. We are an enterprise client of Cisco because the solutions that we have purchased allow us this extra immediate service. 

The initial setup of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN was straightforward. You create the network, you add in the license, it pulls in all the devices, then you only need to rename the devices to whatever you want. What I enjoy are the ones I always request or require is a floor plan from the architect. I upload the floor plan, and I place it on the map, similar to a Google map. I place where all the devices are located within that floor plan on the map, and I provide that as documentation to the clients and they love it.

I would rate Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN implementation a five out of five.

We do the implementation, maintenance, and support of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN. You set the solution up and it runs, it is pretty simple to manage. 

We are very particular with email alerts when we receive them. When we receive the alerts, we will let the client know that on a particular evening or morning during the weekday or weekend, or early morning hours, we will be sending a firmware update or an update for the software. We do it in a way that does not affect them.

If everyone were to see all the features, utilities, and tools that can be used and the reporting that Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN can provide, I think they would be able to better justify the cost. Although, it's still a little bit on the pricey side, and for me to explain everything in plain English to a non-tech person would take a while. 

It would take me upwards of an hour because I would be a very big cheerleader for this solution. I'm an extreme fanatic about Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN. That's why I wanted to show them the comparison between the Ubiquiti and the Ruckus solutions next to Cisco, and the biggest hesitation is the price of the solution, which includes the licensing, and renewal. Otherwise, Ubiquiti would win, but the problem with Ubiquiti is, they don't have the granular type of customization of reporting that the owner of the restaurant wanted.  I'm sure that once he gets started and he gets people in there, he is going to see that it is worth it. 

He won't have a problem with it moving forward, but the price was a tough sell. We thought at first we weren't going to get it. We used a report from PeerSpot for two clients to compare solutions. One of the two we did receive as a client and the other one we did not. I feel that the client that we did not sell Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN to will come back to us because they were focused on purchasing a cheap solution. However, as they say, you get what you pay for. They might be calling us back in a month to potentially change solutions.

The customer we implemented Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN for found the reporting invaluable, and it paid for the cost of the implementation of the wireless devices.

My client has made comments on the price, indicating it is expensive, however you do receive a lot for the money that you did spend on the solution. The price of the annual renewal of the licensing of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is a little high. We wish the price would drop.

I have looked at our parts and labor sheet, for a three-year license for three access points and the A port PoE switch, will cost approximately $1,200. It is approximately $400 a year for licensing for Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN.

In the beginning, I had to find and figure out where to find certain functions. The logistics of where things are configured or located in the dashboard can be difficult to find, it could be more intuitive. It's not a perfect solution. However, if money weren't an object, I would suggest that everyone should use a Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN solution.

My advice to those that have not used a Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN, I would recommend them to check the community forums that are available and ask questions there. They're very helpful. There are several YouTube videos that can be used to receive a good overview. They do provide useful documentation with the solution, but they tell you to go online to this specific link and it'll explain in great details step by step what you have to do. 

There are consultants, such as myself, that have YouTube channels. They show you step by step how to set up your first network from start to finish, what to change, what settings to use, what not to use, and depending on the scenario, what changes you need to make, how to use the dashboard, how to add licenses to assigned products. How to create a splash page for a guest login and if you want them to click through, and after redirect them to that client's website before they click on and connect to the internet and go someplace else. There are a lot of other outside non-Cisco vendors and consultants that put a lot of information out there. I've always told people, Google and YouTube are your best friends.

I grew up where, to find something, you would have to physically go to the library, and you had to go through the Rolodex card catalog file to find a book. The process would take a couple of hours, with the technology today the process now can take a couple of seconds, and you can download a digital copy of the book and read it on your Kindle, iPad, or whatever device you choose. 

Cisco is very picky about their solutions, they strive for accuracy and non-buggy software. I commend them for that, and there's a price to pay for research and design.

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

We use this product for the branch network connecting with the core application in the data centers of our main customers. 

We provide a Wi-Fi, secured internet connection for the customer branch.

This is an entry point to excel in other value-added services. 

Connectivity is the base of our internet provider service.

The most valuable feature is the technology of the security that is offered.

The connection to the internet via Wi-Fi, for external people who frequent the customer branch, needs improvement.

In the next release, I would like to see the central control plane have the flexibility to control and distribute policies to all LAN networks, balance the traffic, and the performance based on application monitoring.

I have been using this solution for approximately three or four months.

It's a stable solution.

This is not an area that I have explored as I am not a project specialist, but we would like to increase our usage.

We have approximately 300 users.

Technical support is good, but not easy to access and the technology is not open. It is very proprietary.

We have to have a variety of solution vendors in our portfolio. Currently, we have Aruba, Huawei, and Fortinet.

We will be increasing our vendors to include others to enlarge our portfolio.

Aruba is better for radio performance coverage, and it's easier. Meraki is more secure.

The initial setup is quite complex.

We have a team of six or seven internal members, plus the system integrator to maintain this solution.

We used a systems integrator selected by Meraki.

This solution is quite costly and there are costs in addition to the licensing fees.

Depending on the preference of the customer, we have some monthly or yearly licenses.

This is a product I can recommend to others.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

Our primary use case for the Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN solution is providing Internet access, particularly for guests and remote environments. It enables us to implement controls such as a hospitality landing page for guest authentication, enhancing security and user experience.

The product's coverage area could be expanded. It would help ensure better connectivity.

We have been using Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN for three months.

I rate the platform's stability seven out of ten. Sometimes, there might be network outages or power shortages. The SSID remains safe; however, you may need to switch off your Wi-Fi and switch it back on the network to resolve connectivity issues.

The scalability is quite satisfactory. I rate it around seven or eight, but not a perfect ten. I have deployed it for over 150 users.

The technical support services are good.

Positive

The product is easy to deploy. It took a few minutes to complete.

The platform is highly priced. We have purchased its five-year license.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN is quite helpful in supporting remote work environments. It's easy to manage and provides a clear network view, allowing efficient navigation down to the network details.

The most useful feature is the ability to determine and control traffic flow. Additionally, the reporting features are valuable. Since I manage the system through the cloud setup, the cloud management feature is quite easy to use. It has a network efficiency of 60%. The platform is stable and easy to deploy.

I rate it an eight out of ten.