UniFi Home Lab vs Campus
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There are several case studies on UBNT websites their hardware being used.
https://www.ubnt.com/casestudies/ -
Remember that vendor advice is inverted. So that the salesman thinks that the best way for him to take your money is to use Meraki and avoid Ubiquiti, your takeaway from the conversation should immediately be "Meraki is bad, Ubiquiti is good." Because the salesman makes his money getting you to avoid good decisions and convincing you to make specific bad decisions. That's what he's paid to do, literally the only thing that he is paid to do. His entire reason for existing (in a career capacity) is to pressure you into giving him your money instead of spending it wisely.
So when he doesn't agree with what you want to do, that should immediately be seen as confirmation that you are doing the right thing.
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@black3dynamite said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
There are several case studies on UBNT websites their hardware being used.
https://www.ubnt.com/casestudies/Thanks for that. Completely forgot to include case studies. Probably one of the most important things to include.
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@markferron said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
@black3dynamite said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
There are several case studies on UBNT websites their hardware being used.
https://www.ubnt.com/casestudies/Thanks for that. Completely forgot to include case studies. Probably one of the most important things to include.
And use reference customers. There are tons of us here. Many of us have specifically moved customers from Meraki to Ubiquiti and can talk directly about the insane leap from "toy" to "enterprise" gear.
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@markferron said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
@black3dynamite said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
There are several case studies on UBNT websites their hardware being used.
https://www.ubnt.com/casestudies/Thanks for that. Completely forgot to include case studies. Probably one of the most important things to include.
Don't forget to mention that Meraki is part of Cisco, which is just a joke until you are spending millions. UBNT is specifically the "Cisco killer" blowing Cisco out of the water to such an absurd degree that no one can really take Cisco seriously once they know about UBNT.
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2016/10/no-one-ever-got-fired-for-buying/
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If it were me doing the presentation, I would consider including a discussion about ethics and how Cisco (and therefore Meraki) and the vendor that pushes them have zero place even being considered on ethics grounds. They are products that exist in this space solely for making money on really unethical IT "managers" looking to play a political game rather than doing their jobs (or worse, getting involved in a kickback scheme.)
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We've had several customers with Meraki. We always pull them out. Any renewals, any configuration problems and it is cheaper to replace them the first time we have to work on them. Same with Cisco gear. We can replace older Cisco gear with vastly superior UBNT gear, get it installed, and configured and up and running for less money than simple the cost of configuring and/or licensing the Cisco gear that they already own. That's how staggering the difference is.
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Idk, for $10, and a little bit of time, my Meraki AP running OpenWRT was quite the bargain for a home AP
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@flaxking said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
Idk, for $10, and a little bit of time, my Meraki AP running OpenWRT was quite the bargain for a home AP
Except you can't get the unit for $10.
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@scottalanmiller said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
@flaxking said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
Idk, for $10, and a little bit of time, my Meraki AP running OpenWRT was quite the bargain for a home AP
Except you can't get the unit for $10.
The UART adapter was the $10, and I didn't even have to do the free webinar, it was a colleague that did it.
Someone somewhere out there probably has found a channel to collect unlicensed Meraki APs (partially thanks to them giving them out like free candy) and is flashing them and using the open source version of CT to create ultra cheap wireless networks.
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@flaxking said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
@scottalanmiller said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
@flaxking said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
Idk, for $10, and a little bit of time, my Meraki AP running OpenWRT was quite the bargain for a home AP
Except you can't get the unit for $10.
The UART adapter was the $10, and I didn't even have to do the free webinar, it was a colleague that did it.
I've done the webinar and they send nothing, it was a scam. They just didn't respond afterward. But it's only the AP that's free. You are getting the AP to act as a router?
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@scottalanmiller said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
@flaxking said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
@scottalanmiller said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
@flaxking said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
Idk, for $10, and a little bit of time, my Meraki AP running OpenWRT was quite the bargain for a home AP
Except you can't get the unit for $10.
The UART adapter was the $10, and I didn't even have to do the free webinar, it was a colleague that did it.
I've done the webinar and they send nothing, it was a scam. They just didn't respond afterward. But it's only the AP that's free. You are getting the AP to act as a router?
I did the webinar AND got the AP. Nice to have a freebie that worked for the free license duration but now it's a paperweight. Even if it had been the same price as the UBNT, I still wouldn't have bought the Meraki AP.
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@markferron said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
@black3dynamite said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
There are several case studies on UBNT websites their hardware being used.
https://www.ubnt.com/casestudies/Thanks for that. Completely forgot to include case studies. Probably one of the most important things to include.
Make sure to note that this is a vendor case study. SO it will be just as biased as a Meraki case study by Meraki.
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@scottalanmiller said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
@markferron said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
... UniFi and told me that Ubiquity was not enterprise grade hardware.
Says a salesman that doesn't even work in IT.
Yeah had the same with a supplier that came in to discuss a hardware refresh. As soon as we mentioned ubiquity he pffft at it lol and suggested meraki. Told them to leave
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@hobbit666 said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
@scottalanmiller said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
@markferron said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
... UniFi and told me that Ubiquity was not enterprise grade hardware.
Says a salesman that doesn't even work in IT.
Yeah had the same with a supplier that came in to discuss a hardware refresh.
This is where I tell them to leave. Suppliers have no business being in house or discussing anything, or even knowing what we have or plan to buy. Not their business, at all. It's actually a bit of a security leak to let them know.
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Meraki isn't business grade, it's a joke. But the cost is nearly that of real security gear, like the Palo Alto. If Meraki is "good enough", you don't need Meraki at all.
You know, after thinking about this, I'm starting to think that Palo Alto might even be overkill for what we need. Our network isn't complicated. We use client VPN and will need the ability to have a site-to-site VPN, content filtering, and maybe layer 7 filtering. Although you could easily make the argument that someone could just buy a VPN for less then a Netflix subscription so it almost makes filtering pointless.
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@markferron said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
Meraki isn't business grade, it's a joke. But the cost is nearly that of real security gear, like the Palo Alto. If Meraki is "good enough", you don't need Meraki at all.
You know, after thinking about this, I'm starting to think that Palo Alto might even be overkill for what we need.
LOL, um, yeah. Unless you are a financial institution, military, etc. you don't need Palo Alto. No one in the education, non-profit, SMB, or normal business spaces needs it. It's the most extreme high end.
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@markferron said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
Although you could easily make the argument that someone could just buy a VPN for less then a Netflix subscription so it almost makes filtering pointless.
Pretty much any good VPN is free. You "never" pay for a VPN, that should be a huge red flag. I don't know of any acceptable VPN that isn't free. OpenVPN, IPSec, Ubiquiti style, ZeroTier... all free.
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I do think that on a college campus, at minimum, Layer 7 (Application) filtering is necessary to keep students from using all the bandwidth for torrents instead of legitimate educational things... Like Netflix, Youtube, and Online Gaming.
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@dafyre said in UniFi Home Lab vs Campus:
I do think that on a college campus, at minimum, Layer 7 (Application) filtering is necessary to keep students from using all the bandwidth for torrents instead of legitimate educational things... Like Netflix, Youtube, and Online Gaming.
In SUNY schools in NY they legally weren't (may still be in effect) allowed to limit what the students use the internet for. Being paid for by tax dollars and all. . .
