Any Meraki wireless experts out there?
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@alexntg said:
Do you have multiple sites to take care of? Are you looking to minimize your involvement with wireless networking? Are you looking for more visibility into your wireless networks than just a list of clients? if so, Meraki may be for you.
How many users are you looking at?
Single site. Definitely looking to minimize my involvement. Not many concurrent users at all. We have around a dozen homeworkers who require wifi access for their laptops and phones when they come in to the office. Around half a dozen internal users who are mainly wired but will use their laptops and ipads in meetings. And we're planning on issuing iPods to around ten shopfloor workers for access to our ERP system.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Meraki is especially good when you are integrating them top to bottom. You'll get better value if you are using Meraki System Manager (free), Meraki firewalls, Meraki switches, etc. All one interface for everything.
All our mobile devices (laptops, phones, iPads) are managed using System Manager, which I love. That's part of the reasoning for going with Meraki - they deserve some money from me.
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@scottalanmiller said:
The price though, wow. It's moderately high to acquire and super high to keep. It's easily four or five times the cost of its primary competition.
Blimey! Are you sure? I've been quoted for a Netgear ProSafe Starter Kit and the price is only slightly lower than Meraki over a 3 year period. The subs for each Meraki AP is less than $100 per year.
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Our IT supplier did a survey, which involved placing a Netgear AP in a couple of locations and wandering around with a laptop running inSSIDer recording the results. Based on this, they quoted for 6 APs in the office and 4 in the factory, plus a couple of PoE Netgear switches as none of our existing switches are PoE. All MR18s. The total cost, including installation and 3 year subs was around $14k.
The office is around 12,000 sq ft over two floors, the factory is 45 sq ft on a single floor.
I've done my own survey, but I'm not sure how to interpret the results. I placed a single MR16 AP (the one they gave me for free) in the middle of the factory, about four feet off the ground. The signal varied between -36dBm nearby to -50dBm at the far end of the factory behind some racking filled with cardboard boxes. This was on 2.5GHz. At 5GHz the results were significantly worse, dropping below -60dBm on the edges of the factory.
The office performed much worse. I placed the unit upstairs. Directly below it downstairs I got -45 at 2.5GHz and -63 at 5GHz. At the far end of the office, behind a couple of walls, I got -76.
What kind of dBm should I be expecting to avoid problems? My initial thought is 10 units seems overkill?
I'm also not sure about the logic of replacing one of our existing 24 port switches with a new PoE one, when I could buy an 8 port one for peanuts and attach it to the existing one? Alternatively, has anyone used PoE Injectors instead?
Finally, as I mentioned above, I reached out to our preferred IT supplier who will supply Meraki through a distributor but I've been told that Meraki will only supply at reduced "bid" pricing if I have a conference call via webex with them. Is this normal? It seems a bit weird.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
The price though, wow. It's moderately high to acquire and super high to keep. It's easily four or five times the cost of its primary competition.
Blimey! Are you sure? I've been quoted for a Netgear ProSafe Starter Kit and the price is only slightly lower than Meraki over a 3 year period. The subs for each Meraki AP is less than $100 per year.
$100 per year is crazy! What price are you getting on Netgear ProSafe? Here it is cheaper to acquire and free after you buy it. I've never seen Prosafe come to a fraction of the Meraki costs.
But if you really want value, Ubiquiti is the obvious answer. Lower than ProSafe in price, higher in quality and performance. I switched from Prosafe to Ubiquiti for home and in most network recommendations.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Finally, as I mentioned above, I reached out to our preferred IT supplier who will supply Meraki through a distributor but I've been told that Meraki will only supply at reduced "bid" pricing if I have a conference call via webex with them. Is this normal? It seems a bit weird.
Everything with them is super weird.
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And don't look at three year pricing, you normally assume five to ten years on APs. The Merakis will continue to escalate in price while Prosafe and Ubiquiti remain free to own until they die.
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Let's go Meraki MR12 versus Ubiquiti's base model.
Base price:
Meraki $400
Ubiquiti $90Price for Five Years License:
Meraki: $450
Ubiquiti: FreeFull Price After Five Years:
Meraki: $850
Ubiquiti: $90That is nearly 1,000% more for the Meraki over just part of its lifespan!!
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Additionally, there is the UniFi AP Pro that has 5ghz as well as the new Model that support 802.11ac. The UniFi AP is not $90 either. A three pack box of them is $180 (I think) while I generally see the UAP (base model) for $70.
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@scottalanmiller said:
What price are you getting on Netgear ProSafe? Here it is cheaper to acquire and free after you buy it. I've never seen Prosafe come to a fraction of the Meraki costs.
http://www.uk.insight.com/en-gb/productinfo/wireless-networking/0003120178-00000001
Insight generally offer the lowest price here.@scottalanmiller said:
But if you really want value, Ubiquiti is the obvious answer. Lower than ProSafe in price, higher in quality and performance.
Sounds good. The big suppliers here in the UK don't appear to sell Ubiquiti. I'm not sure how popular it is here. I know nothing about them. How do you manage them? Do you not need any controller? Is the base model a similar spec and quality to an MR12?
@scottalanmiller said:
you normally assume five to ten years on APs
Ten years? Really? It seems to be that there's too much development in wireless to last ten years. I'm expecting much faster transfer rates in 5 years time, never mind 10.
Anyway, the purpose of my thread wasn't to ask 'should I buy Meraki or something else', it was to get help spec'ing out the correct Meraki solution.
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I'm going to get Netgear. You guys have killed my Meraki buzz
My questions are still applicable though.....
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I'm going to get Netgear. You guys have killed my Meraki buzz
My questions are still applicable though.....
Why Netgear and not Ubiquiti? I used to use Prosafe but with Ubiquiti available now, I can't think of any scenario where I would choose Prosafe wireless.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
you normally assume five to ten years on APs
Ten years? Really? It seems to be that there's too much development in wireless to last ten years. I'm expecting much faster transfer rates in 5 years time, never mind 10.
Really? Wireless from ten years ago still works well today and the pace of improvement is slowing rapidly. The only new advancement recently is AC and pretty much no one has a reason to even look at that for the next several years. Ten years seems really reasonable from wireless based on the last ten years.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Sounds good. The big suppliers here in the UK don't appear to sell Ubiquiti. I'm not sure how popular it is here. I know nothing about them. How do you manage them? Do you not need any controller? Is the base model a similar spec and quality to an MR12?
The biggest vendor has it...
They are super popular, they are the market darling of the last few years. They do not advertise, though, they go by word of mouth. So when you talk to pros, the are the primary recommendation. If you look at resellers, you won't hear about them because they only sell through a few huge vendors (like Amazon) and there is effectively no profit margin - so any reseller will point you do Meraki, Negear, Cisco or others with huge payoffs to the resellers.
You manage them just like Meraki - only you host the console rather than using one hosted by Cisco. No, no controller needed (hardware) but you have to run the controller software (on any desktop.)
Base model is probably above the MR12.
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That Amazon link is just a link to an Amazon reseller based in Latvia. I am tempted, but installing them myself isn't really an option, so it might be a bit tricky going through a reseller I don't know. The resellers all seem pretty small to me, not that that is necessarily a problem.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
That Amazon link is just a link to an Amazon reseller based in Latvia. I am tempted, but installing them myself isn't really an option, so it might be a bit tricky going through a reseller I don't know. The resellers all seem pretty small to me, not that that is necessarily a problem.
Weird. I'm really surprised that there are not more outlets for acquiring them. Although even here I've never seen them through a VAR.
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In the US, they spread from the WISP (Wireless ISP) sector because gear for that market is where they started. Baltic Networks in northern Illinois carries a ton of their gear in stock all the time.
Very sorry to be such a buzz kill on the. Meraki products. I do like it, but it just does not work out for all the SMB I deal with.
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Yes. Meraki is very nice but the cost is just absurd.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Although even here I've never seen them through a VAR.
This is the problem. For a small SME it is very difficult to buy hardware that isn't from a VAR because you need someone to install the kit. I've done it plenty of times, partly because I'm a control freak and partly to save money, but it's not easy - you get the hardware from X and get the install from Y. If you're not careful, it can result in everyone being unsatisfied. It's great when it works out and a nightmare when it goes wrong.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Although even here I've never seen them through a VAR.
This is the problem. For a small SME it is very difficult to buy hardware that isn't from a VAR because you need someone to install the kit. I've done it plenty of times, partly because I'm a control freak and partly to save money, but it's not easy - you get the hardware from X and get the install from Y. If you're not careful, it can result in everyone being unsatisfied. It's great when it works out and a nightmare when it goes wrong.
Why do you need an installation for APs? What work are you wanting the VAR to do for you?
