What needs improvement with Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN?

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.

Updating the equipment and the scheme they use to bill for the license could be improved. We once had to move some access points from one campus to another. Since each campus has its own specifications, we had to delete the access points from one and reschedule them on the other, but we spent money on a new license. That was a management problem we faced. We tried to implement the single sign-on with Google, which was a bit complex.

The product's interface should be user-friendly. The integration options with third-party applications need enhancement.

The solution’s pricing could be improved.

The solution's pricing could be improved.

The product's pricing needs improvement.

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.

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

The pricing structure could be improved.

Currently, with Meraki, a controller is required to direct guest and user traffic to the internet. Improvement is needed in the portal for enhanced visibility into activities. Additionally, addressing multiple bugs, especially those arising with new releases, is crucial to ensure system stability.

The product's features for network analysis need improvement. It lags a bit in providing reports for Wi-Fi performance. Additionally, they should offer a higher-end firewall.

As a daily user of the solution, I haven't found anything that needs improvement. The solution's mobile application and management of dashboards are areas with shortcomings that need improvement. Though there are a few features that I would like to see in future releases of the product, they cannot be made possible.

The initial setup of the solution can be improved and made easier.

The initial setup could be made easier.

The cost for the solution's license could be better.

The licensing could be improved. Licensing is, in my opinion, the least appealing component. It can be difficult to keep licenses up to date in order for the system to function properly.

The wireless infrastructure scalability has room for improvement.

In terms of improvement, the time taken to update to the cloud can be made better. There is a small delay, so if there is a way to make it real-time, exactly like a real-time update, that would be the best option. Log monitoring and log view features can also be improved upon.

It would be useful to have a service management platform integrated within this solution where we can measure the customer experience. It would also be useful to have assistance with the go-to-market strategy when using this solution.

In terms of anything to improve, recently I have seen that the Meraki access point, maybe due to congestion, just kicks off my customers, mostly when they are in Zoom meetings or Teams meetings and they have to reconnect. It is not a good thing. I have been on the communities trying to find solutions, but I think Meraki is working around the clock to fix that bug. Other than that, I think it's okay. We moved to WIFI Fix, so I think that the improvements are there. They are already in R&D. So I look forward to more good things coming from Meraki. It just kicks them off, because one minute they are connected and then they are completely dropped, and then after a minute or two, we connect back. I think it is an AP issue that Meraki might need to take a look at. If anyone has some hack around that, I would be interested in knowing what it is. In terms of what I would like to see in the next release, for starters, I would like an air marshal not to interrupt service. I would like to be able to do a separate scan of the network while the service is still running. It is important for me to know what environment I am working in. But every time I do that, it tends to have the IP go off and everyone starts complaining. That would be a feature that I would like to be added.

The products are delayed when arriving in Argentina. These delays can be as long as 6 months, causing the customers to be unhappy. I would like to see Cisco Meraki improve the accessibility by region level here in Latin America.

I have some problems when I want to connect some users when there are a lot of users and they disconnect. Another pain point is that we have to manually do the frequency settings, especially the power of the access points.

We're are not fully utilizing the features of Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN to know a more in-depth analysis of what areas need to be improved. However, the security could improve. It would be a benefit to be able to lock out particular clients that are trying to connect from outside the building. In an upcoming release, it would be a benefit to have a security dashboard that could show additional information. In addition to our Meraki solution, we have a Cisco product called ISE, Identification Security Engine, and we can detect non-compliant or non-corporate addresses from our network. Instead of using a second product, the Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN should be able to isolate the non-specified MAC addresses into the network.

Cisco could add more security features on the other layers, like if Cisco's IPS antivirus could be downloaded. They could also add some more controls for guest access. For example, when you have a captive portal, it would be nice to limit the amount of time users can stay connected per day. Right now, you can only configure the splash frequency. And you can set the connection for one hour, but you have to use the billing feature.

Cisco offers pretty expensive devices. I'd like it if Cisco made it possible to integrate its solution with HP. The initial setup is a bit difficult.

There are a lot of improvements that could be made, especially from the feature point of view. If you compare the Meraki firewall to UTM, Meraki has close to 90% of all the features that UTM offers but there are some that are lacking and that need to be rectified. For example, UTM has a feature that enables you to block videos inside Facebook or block particular applications inside another application. In Meraki, you can only block the entire app or the entire URL. For example, you can block the category video, but not any applications that are inside apps. When it comes to switching, Meraki lacks categories of features, like the traditional Cisco, Aruba, or Ruckus app, and I think they need to increase the number of modules and categories of switches.

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.

Meraki is still very much a small office type of solution. It is not a fit for large enterprise networks, as it doesn't have tunneling functionalities. If you are configuring Meraki as a RADIUS client, you have to add individual 100 or whatever devices on the site as a RADIUS client. There is no RADIUS proxy option. Therefore, it is pretty much still a good use case for small networks, however, it's not a great use case for larger networks. The product needs to offer role-based access.

This is just an option that customers can choose from. There's nothing that special about it. As a basic solution it does the job, however, I can't say it's fabulous.

Integration with the corporate LAN where Catalyst products are installed is a major challenge.

We would like the solution to work on the pricing of the solution. It would be ideal if it could bring the overall costs down.

We need more options for core switches. More switches with hardware capabilities that can be used at the core level. That would be very helpful. It would be good to integrate with ISE in the future.

Its price could be improved.

The biggest pain point is that they limit you through firewall throughput. I understand why they do it, but that really grates me. For instance, for 450 Mbps throughput, you're looking at £800 for a router, whereas if you look at the one gig connection, for some of us are lucky enough to have a gig connection, you could almost be spending £3,000 for the option to have one gig connectivity. That's one of the pain points I've got. I don't mind paying for throughput, but I should at least have the option to be able to update that throughput, maybe through extra licensing or something else. It is crazy expensive to jump through to the next one.

Its price should be reduced.

It is expensive. Juniper seems to have a lot more to offer for future expansion. Juniper has some features that are not there in this solution.

The signal coverage radius could be extended. I would also like to have a planner for designs.

The licensing model is a terrible idea. Don’t buy a license for seven years, you will be stuck with old hardware that doesn’t work properly anymore, and can’t be replaced and you are expected to pay yourself to replace in order to fix their issues. If they can't fix the issues anymore in 7-year-old hardware they should replace the hardware at their expense, however, all they say is you have to buy new hardware. A maximum of a five-year license is my recommendation. WiFi technology moves fast and seven-year-old hardware is no longer workable. The limit of two weeks on rolling back a firmware update is ridiculous. If you report a problem that affects a whole location they should let you roll back the firmware after any amount of time, not limited to two weeks. Then you have to spend a month every day on the phone trying to persuade them that you have a serious issue with their firmware.

Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN could improve by having more granularity in terms of the data displayed. However, I understand that with Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN, you need to have a compromise point to what are the functions that you're going to provide to the users versus ease of use. More granularity in terms of the data and the things that you can do to the devices would be helpful. For example, when we wanted to make a change, restriction, or segregation within Palo Alto, we can go to the level of detail that we want. The amount of detail provided is amazing, it is very granular. However, it comes with much more difficulty, it requires a technical understanding of the environment compared to Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN.

The only concern is when the license has expired and it will no longer function, the entire network goes down, without any notification, or warning. The price could be reduced.

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 haven't really come across anything that was a big issue with this product. I can't think of anything that would have raised a flag about something needing to be improved in Cisco Meraki Wireless LAN, but it could be their support. We had some issues, and we couldn't figure out why they happened, but some of their first level support staff does not seem to be well-versed with how to solve those issues. Nothing really comes to mind about what I would like to see on the next release. I know they are using the six GHz band now for Wi-Fi 6, submitted out as an option, seeing use of the six GHz band down the road for Wi-Fi 6.

Meraki leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to the technical capabilities in terms of throughput, spectrum, management, higher-level functions, etc.

Documentation could be improved, but everything else has been spot-on.

An area for improvement would be that Meraki doesn't work well in a warehouse environment. The device is too sensitive to other wireless devices, which provokes noise and can require a reboot to erase this. In addition, the cost of the product could be better.

The price can always be better. There should be better Spanish-language technical support.

I am new to this solution. At the moment, I am not the right person or in a position to suggest something new or point out something that's lacking. I time to use it properly and see the pros and cons of the product and the requirements regarding our business. The dashboard could be a bit better. I'd like to see more information about the whole controller and APs. It should be as simple and convenient.

You're starting to see CO2-type sensors come into the classrooms and stuff like that. So it would be nice to build some "if-then" functions into IoT-type sensors. For instance, if a classroom has high CO2 levels, you could automatically open the Windows and use heat exchange to bring in fresh air into the room. At the same time, you could have the temperature control adjust automatically so it doesn't get too hot or too. So you would need to plug in some configurable where you collect the output from the sensors and have it carry out some small actions based on that. I think it's well within Meraki's capabilities.

They're great. If there's anything that they need to change, it is just simplifying the site to which you go to make changes on the admin side.

Overall the solution needs to have more time to mature.

The problem with the solution is that if you go for firewall, then there is no SSL encryption available. If you are talking about deep packet inspection, that is not available. If you want SSL encryption, then you have to integrate with Cisco Umbrella. If they could work on the Meraki firewall hardware, and add SSL decryption as well as more application control and deep packet inspection, that would be ideal. Also in Cisco Meraki access points, MAC filtering is not available. If they could add that feature, that would be great.

The solution should be more secure. It is overpriced and more expensive than Hauwei.

Its licensing can be better.

There could be more functionality.

The ease of use is average. It could be more user-friendly. The initial setup could be simplified.

It is super expensive for what you get. I just wish it was less expensive.

The throughput of the switches for wireless could be improved. I am expecting more from it. The bandwidth should be improved. It should be increased.

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.

On the performance side, there are always updates to different versions. It's more just getting it out to the client-side that's often the issue. The licensing could be a bit better. They should market Meraki as a mid-level solution for SMBs. There are a lot of SMBs out there, and they could use this technology.

This solution could benefit from a heat mapping ability so that you can tell where the hotspots are, and where the good signals are. To have that be available from within the management software would be fantastic.

The solution should be open to introducing more IoT sensors and to have a more complete solution to medium-sized customers. The solution could saturate more of the market, as likely 80% of the market would like to see more simple solutions such as Meraki. It would be ideal if you didn't necessarily have to go to professionals to get a product like this. It should be sold more in the retail space. It would be great if the solution could integrate with Amazon Alexa. We'd be able to leverage Meraki and build more intelligent homes and businesses. It would help us build new items we could deliver to our clients, and to build better B2C relations. It would be nice to have licensing that stays in place while the system is being renovated or changed. If there was a way to have remote WiFi to support local connections during issues, so that technical support doesn't have to shut down the entire network, that would be great. If there was something like a robot that could continue running the network while there are licensing or technical issues, so that WiFi never goes down, that would be an ideal situation.

The annual maintenance is something that needs to be changed.

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.

The user interface needs to be improved. We would like to see the DNS Proxy and some additional security enhancements in the future.

I can't say that there are any additional features that we would like to see included in it. Our only concern at this stage is how it's licensed.

When the license expires, access to the Cisco cloud stops immediately. They should introduce a grace period of 60 days after license expiry because as it is now, it automatically goes down and there is no grace period. There should be better integration with other products.

Initially, I liked some of the filtering features, but that's one of the components that we ran into problems with. We don't use it as much anymore. This is one of the things that I'm trying to find out if Aruba does better. For example, I like all of my iOS devices to go on one network so that if they try to do iOS updates, we have an Apple server online so that they can just pull the iOS updates from it instead of having them on other parts of the network. Also, we're a one-to-one school where we give laptops out, and I'd like to be able to block the old laptops from being able to access the network. That means that the students are forced to use their new laptop, as opposed to an older one. It would be really helpful if there were a way that the access point could determine whether the client has an AC radio and if so, force it to try and connect to there first. As it is now, it lets the client determine how it wants to connect. This is the case with wireless in general, but it would be nice to have this option.

Currently, only a limited number of clients can connect to these devices.

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 would like to see integration with sensors.

It's a little bit customizable, but that's where it probably has one of its downfalls. It is not as feature-rich as some of the others. The customization needs to be improved because it's pretty locked down. You can't customize it much. In the next release of this solution, I would like to see the Radio Control feature included, and improved customization on the radios. Also, it needs more ability to control it. It works well but you can really change it a lot.

The advanced configuration makes it so that any user can enable some of these features without having to ask them for help. It's designed like this because their business model targets people with mid-range expertise. I think Meraki's doing fine, but I had to leave them because I came from using Cisco before they bought Meraki — which gives you so many options that you can expand upon that it's absolutely mind-numbing. As you learn, you miss some of those features when you switch to something else. I did enjoy using Meraki and I would use it again, but I wouldn't be using it for a large office because they don't have the kind of manpower to properly administrate it. If there are advanced features that you can have enabled, they should allow users access to that in an easier manner.

The price could be slightly lowered to make it more competitive in the market.

The Meraki platform needs better on-premises management options.

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.

The price of Meraki Wireless should be reduced to make it more affordable. When we are using SSID roaming, it is not flexible in terms of which AP it connects to. It will not switch to the closet one, but rather, it will maintain a connection with the first one that it had connected to. This has a negative effect on signal quality because as we move around the building and the signal from the original access point gets weaker, it remains connected to it.

We haven't had any issues with the solution. We like the way it works. There isn't anything I can think of that makes me worry that it might be lacking in a certain area.

The product is fine as it is. Having been in the IT industry for nearly 20 years, there's nothing that jumps out at me. The product is improving all the time. It could be slightly cheaper but it's fine. It's actually a very good product.

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.

In many wireless solutions, there are a lot of things that can be added, like WiFi 6. Meraki should share its viability roadmap. It is really hard to know which functionality will appear or when they will be available. It is also hard to know which features are available now but are not visible on the dashboard. In France, there's a law that requires we should keep a log of connection for 1 year, so it would be really nice to have a solution or feature that allows us to keep a log in the cloud during the year with log rotations and secure log authorizations. Right now, in France, it is not possible.

The stability of this solution is not good. It needs improvement. Operation-wise this solution has some problems and the functionality is not very good. In the next release, I would like to see a third-party high tech center to connect multiple users to a particular network.

Some operations can be quicker within the solution. When it is deployed and registered on Meraki cloud, when you move, for example, a device from one customer to another, you need to un-claim the device from Customer A, and then claim it to Customer B. This process can take one hour. If they could shorten this time to about 10 minutes or so, that would be ideal. The commercial version of the solution could be cheaper.

Unfortunately, we have to deal with European privacy laws and as far as we can see, the solution is not compliant with these. It's why we're not able to continue with Cisco Meraki. They need to become compliant with GDPR laws. They should make the solution more transparent so we can better see what the system does.

There is only one particular thing that needs improvement. Sometimes, for example, when you need to open a ticket, although it's under the umbrella of Cisco, you still need to go to the Meraki support. We had issues with Cisco in general. We have multiple platforms from Cisco but when it came to Meraki, we thought to go to another support team to open a case. That's something that might be improved. My opinion and recommendation would be that when you open a case at Cisco, Meraki should be irrelevant. You should have the same support experience just as we have with Cisco. In the next release, they should improve the way that you engage support. Once you engage them, they are quite knowledgeable and they are okay. There's no issue with that.

The technical support for Meraki needs improvements made to the waiting times. The explanation when you have problems, and the tools in place to follow the case, are not very good. They should reconsider the rules under licensing. If you do not pay your subscription within the month of it being due, the use of the product will stop.

These products are more suitable for SMB rather than an enterprise for one of the listed Access Points like MR-20, Whereas MR-33 and above models covers and target the Enterprise customers. We would like to see Wi-Fi 6 support for devices sold in the Middle East, however, Meraki has introduced WiFi-6 where we would strategize our GTM plans for WiFi 6, where we would offer WiFi 6 to specific customers with extensive needs of high WiFi availability in KSA.

The price is good, but it could be improved. The camera needs improvement because currently, it only accepts a 128-gigabyte memory card. It's too small to record a video. In the future, I would like to see IP telephony in Saudi Arabia. It is currently not available.

In a future release, they should offer a next-generation UTM, where you can manage all items and the network, and have it include a lot of security features like fingerprinting functionality.

I would be interested in seeing more enterprise-level, advanced user features. Technical support can be improved, as well as having more detailed capabilities to go without using an API.

The logging sometimes doesn't give us the granularity needed. Some of the rules are a bit more complicated. The switch ports on the routers are not individually addressable, in the sense that with a switch you can tell what MAC address is on what port but with the security appliances, you can't, which would be beneficial for troubleshooting. I would like to see more information on what is plugged into each MX switch port. I would also like to be able to see that the templates would be able to be used because we're in MSP, so if I create a template, I have to recreate the template with each of our clients. I'd prefer to create one template and then personalize it for each client which is a little extra work that way. The dashboard security is not as good as it could be in terms of provision users. If I provision the user at the high level, I'd like to give them rights to our customers so if I have a new technician, I have to go and touch each customer and add that technician which is kind of silly.

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.