Anyone using Meraki switches?

DHR

DHR

DHR

Soldato
Joined
30 Apr 2003
Posts
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Been using a wireless setup for months and am loving the reporting and general setup. Getting tempted with putting in a couple of switches for workstations and voice.... Any real world experience of this?
 
They're far more expensive than their equivalent competitors aren't they? We looked into them at work and quickly discounted them.
 
Got 33 of them spread around Cornwall and Devon as well as over 200 Meraki APs and been very impressed with the ease of use and reliability.

If you've got any questions, post away :)
 
Pigeon_Killer said:
Got 33 of them spread around Cornwall and Devon as well as over 200 Meraki APs and been very impressed with the ease of use and reliability.

If you've got any questions, post away :)
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Cheers, it's more the reliability / known issues and gotchas I'm after specially from a switch perspective the wireless kit I know and love. Our supplier was mentioning they've had people experience issues with spanning tree and that but it didn't sound too severe.

Have you had any problems with stuff rolled out in the forced firmware updates? Biggest query I've been asked as well is what happens if they go bankrupt etc given they brick the device if you don't renew the license?
 
Pigeon_Killer said:
Got 33 of them spread around Cornwall and Devon as well as over 200 Meraki APs and been very impressed with the ease of use and reliability.

If you've got any questions, post away :)
Click to expand...

You got any Surface 4's using the AP's? We have a few hundred AP's but the Surfaces getting awful speeds via wireless. Around 2 - 2.5Mbps tranfer speeds compared to a laptop which easily max's the speed.
 
DHR said:
Cheers, it's more the reliability / known issues and gotchas I'm after specially from a switch perspective the wireless kit I know and love. Our supplier was mentioning they've had people experience issues with spanning tree and that but it didn't sound too severe.

Have you had any problems with stuff rolled out in the forced firmware updates? Biggest query I've been asked as well is what happens if they go bankrupt etc given they brick the device if you don't renew the license?
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Given Cisco own them I would be very surprised if they ever went bankrupt. I imagine the devices would be bricked if it did happen though.

Haven't had a single problem with any firmware update so far.

teaboy5 said:
You got any Surface 4's using the AP's? We have a few hundred AP's but the Surfaces getting awful speeds via wireless. Around 2 - 2.5Mbps tranfer speeds compared to a laptop which easily max's the speed.
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We've got two in the field and one in the office but it's not something I'm aware of. Will test it tomorrow and get back to you.
 
Yeah if you don't mind.

A user wouldn't notice if they are just using it for general use, but I noticed it when copying an ISO over to one and couldn't believe how slow it was going. Now that I got one myself in work I want to switch over from a laptop but wouldn't be interested if the wireless is crap for internal use. I also noticed they can sometimes drop from an SSID if they are using radius.

Try going to my.meraki.com and doing a speed test. I tested on a number of them and they all won't go above 20 and so as low as 10.

I logged it with meraki and bar the normal test's which I had already done they are giving up and putting it down to the surface.

I have a mix of 12, 16's, 18's, 24's and Z1 all with the same issue.
 
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Thanks guys, this is exactly the sort of conversation I wanted to stimulate. Thus far the only thing that's stopping me from being able to recommend the switches specifically is that effective kill switch, for wireless in that sense I'm less bothered. If they left the devices unmanageable, but still functioning I'd be fine with it, it just seems like the sort of risk that could end people's careers if you get what I mean?
 
DHR said:
Thanks guys, this is exactly the sort of conversation I wanted to stimulate. Thus far the only thing that's stopping me from being able to recommend the switches specifically is that effective kill switch, for wireless in that sense I'm less bothered. If they left the devices unmanageable, but still functioning I'd be fine with it, it just seems like the sort of risk that could end people's careers if you get what I mean?
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Not sure what you mean by the careers bit?

Are you suggesting if a load of switches or AP's just stopped working if the company went bust?

It's a risk we all take when we take sub's for stuff managed via the cloud. It should always be factored for.
 
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If you can afford Meraki switches then they are great. I wouldn't use anything else for remote office deployments because then you have to mess with VPN tunnels or local IT support etc and it all gets messy.

Whether you feel they offer good value or not totally depends on your company - if you're in the same office as the switches and your role involves sitting around and reacting in the event of problems and you have the skill to manage a stack of Cisco 2960-X switches or similar then the Meraki option looks really expensive. If you're paid to bring real value to the business then taking yourself away from that task to make a network work again seems wasteful. I would argue that the days of the dedicated good-at-everything IT person in a small business (<100 users) is a fading role, so you'll see MSPs dropping Meraki switches in for their clients with Catalyst's being the go-to option for the companies large enough to have dedicated in-house IT staff.

Anyone dismissing them outright due to the price hasn't done the full TCO calculations.
 
teaboy5 said:
Try going to my.meraki.com and doing a speed test. I tested on a number of them and they all won't go above 20 and so as low as 10.
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Nexus 6P - 50.52Mbps
Dell E5550 (Win 10) - 56.07Mbps
Surface 4 - 45.62Mbps

Signal was 24dB

Caged said:
If you can afford Meraki switches then they are great. I wouldn't use anything else for remote office deployments because then you have to mess with VPN tunnels or local IT support etc and it all gets messy.

Whether you feel they offer good value or not totally depends on your company - if you're in the same office as the switches and your role involves sitting around and reacting in the event of problems and you have the skill to manage a stack of Cisco 2960-X switches or similar then the Meraki option looks really expensive. If you're paid to bring real value to the business then taking yourself away from that task to make a network work again seems wasteful. I would argue that the days of the dedicated good-at-everything IT person in a small business (<100 users) is a fading role, so you'll see MSPs dropping Meraki switches in for their clients with Catalyst's being the go-to option for the companies large enough to have dedicated in-house IT staff.
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This is exactly what we've done. Cisco 3750's at head office and our DR site and Meraki's at all of our satellite sites.

We've got inhouse Cisco expertise for the 3750's but the Meraki GUI is so easy to use they don't require the same skillset to manage so I look after them.

I don't have any formal networking qualifications btw :)
 
The biggest blocker for us at the moment, is essentially the "network as a service" setup. My biggest fear of pushing them into the business is that they're seen as a traditional bit of hardware, buy it, shove it in the rack, leave it there with little or no maintenance. If the license lapses on the Meraki, that's it, the box dies. It's worth noting that we could go down the 2960-x route, but the management of them would predominantly be performed by an MSP.
 
Out of interest do you have them stacked and have any VLANs setup on the Meraki switches? Any voice going through them too?
 
Pigeon_Killer said:
Nexus 6P - 50.52Mbps
Dell E5550 (Win 10) - 56.07Mbps
Surface 4 - 45.62Mbps

Signal was 24dB

This is exactly what we've done. Cisco 3750's at head office and our DR site and Meraki's at all of our satellite sites.

We've got inhouse Cisco expertise for the 3750's but the Meraki GUI is so easy to use they don't require the same skillset to manage so I look after them.

I don't have any formal networking qualifications btw :)
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What model's are you using?

I can't even get over 20Mbps on an MR16. This is an AP with no other traffic on it plugged into a gig port!
 
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I would suggest Aruba's new cloud configuration offerings (HP Procurve 2530s etc) but the last time I tried to sell some HP didn't even have list pricing for it. That was ~3 months ago so maybe they've pulled their finger out.
 
DHR said:
Out of interest do you have them stacked and have any VLANs setup on the Meraki switches? Any voice going through them too?
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We have 5 MS220-48 and 2 MS320-48 in one of our offices. The L2 are using virtual stacking back to the core L3s which in turn is setup as a warm spare.

We use Mitel phones with tagged switch ports and never had any issues. The thing we love about using Meraki equipment is the central admin and the stats we get off it. Sure you could use Ciscoworks or the HP equivalent but it's just not the same.
 
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