Free Cisco Meraki AP

[Oh Ed not again.]

Finally managed to get hold of one of these.

 

[LizardKing]

For anyone wondering why these APs cost a lot more than a £50 Linksys, I just spent a total of 15 minutes creating multiple SSIDs on Meraki APs to drop clients onto the same VLAN but with different access depending on their SSID. One SSID is totally unrestricted using WPA2 Enterprise / RADIUS for authentication, another one uses WPA2 PSK for guest access that blocks all access to the LAN so people can only do stuff on the web and rate limited it to a couple Mbps, and another WPA2 PSK which can only talk to the LAN for stuff like scanning terminals etc.

Didn't have to mess around with a VLAN for each type of client, all the magic happens on the AP. Then someone went and put them up on the ceiling and they pulled their configs down and it all worked.

Pretty much exactly how ours is setup except we use a captive portal on our guest wifi.
stupidly easy to setup!

 

[Caged]

I considered it but in this context guest is people we know that visit now and again as opposed to the public, so a portal just seems cumbersome.

If it was open access with a portal then we'd probably see lots of people around us jump on it, and the internet connection is already terrible without that.

 

[LizardKing]

I considered it but in this context guest is people we know that visit now and again as opposed to the public, so a portal just seems cumbersome.

If it was open access with a portal then we'd probably see lots of people around us jump on it, and the internet connection is already terrible without that.

Its just a legal agreement that they have to click through, even though its only really staff who use it but its what them above wanted else it was nothing.

 

[xGBHxPegasus]

Anyone having any issues with Ipads with WEP/WPA?

Androids and blackberries seem to be fine but Ipads mainly go really slow, taking 30 seconds to open a webpage. Thought it was a WPA issue but seems the its not happening with WEP too

Pinging the ipads from the AP gets results of 500ms but no drops, iphones around 300 and blackberries at 150ms

 

[Caged]

Those ping results are very high. What's the channel utilization look like?

This is what mine is like:



The Meraki APs have been the only ones to provide reliable 2.4GHz performance in this location. Have used Netgear's higher end stuff, HP. AirPorts worked but didn't support the features we needed.

 

[xGBHxPegasus]

Those ping results are very high. What's the channel utilization look like?

This is what mine is like:



The Meraki APs have been the only ones to provide reliable 2.4GHz performance in this location. Have used Netgear's higher end stuff, HP. AirPorts worked but didn't support the features we needed.

utilization is quite low goes between 9% and 20%.

This is what the pings look like:

All on about 16dB strength

 

[Caged]

That's fairly standard for an iOS device that's sleeping (screen off, not streaming music etc). Does it change if you wake it up?

 

[Deleted member 138126]

My wife's iPhone 5 is giving me a 96ms average ping, on around 21db signal strength. Any reason why you are using WEP/WPA and not WPA2?

 

[xGBHxPegasus]

That's fairly standard for an iOS device that's sleeping (screen off, not streaming music etc). Does it change if you wake it up?

Browsing webpages are a lot slower than on other devices such as Androids or iphones aswell, we put the ipad and a GS3/GS4 on the same page and waited for it to load, both galaxy's loaded in seconds but the ipad took 30 seconds to load

My wife's iPhone 5 is giving me a 96ms average ping, on around 21db signal strength. Any reason why you are using WEP/WPA and not WPA2?

Sorry when I said WPA I meant both WPA/WPA2, we changed to WEP just to test and see if it made a difference as the access point we replaced was using WEP and had no issues.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

Weird. I don't have an iPad, but have an iPhone 5 and a 5S, and both are quick as anything. Could be a DNS issue? What is providing DNS on your network?

 

[Jasseh]

Decided to email Tom again today as I hadn't heard anything from them since November 20th. Got the reply I was hoping for, they have decided I am eligible and my AP will arrive next week . I'm looking forward to testing it out (might have to watch the webinar again as it has been so long though).

 

[teaboy5]

Is it possible for for this solution to use a different internet connection for the guest network?

 

[Caged]

Yes, put it on a separate VLAN.

 

[Nurple]

If anyone missed out on one of these, seems the offer is back on

https://meraki.cisco.com/freeap?mkt...podcMT8FhNLrYDBceEJhqyQJxPr3FLdAN0dtnRhTiCQ==

 

[Oh Ed not again.]

Anyone not using their MR12 and it's going begging per chance?

Or if not begging, MM?

 

[Mikey]

I've installed these before, but circa 18 months ago, so will register and get another. I'm wanting to convince the company to look at the Meraki over the Cisco WLC solution we have at present. Such a diverse group of companies that some have the money and some don't so this could work well. IT standard is WLC and Cisco APs, but the small BU's will just say no..

Failing all this I'll install at home to replace my Sky AP and so forth

 

[Deleted member 138126]

Meraki is very nice, but so expensive. I don't really understand who the intended market is:

- I don't think enterprises are interested in "cloud managed" network devices.
- Small businesses can't afford e.g. £800 for a switch when you can get a Smart HP switch for a quarter of that (and no ongoing cost). Or under £300 for Cisco's latest small business AC Wifi access point, vs £1000 for the Meraki MR34.

That plus extremely high ongoing support costs (you have to pay Meraki for the rest of your life or you lose the ability to manage the devices).

I don't get it.

 

[james.miller]

We recently had a a meraki system installed, not sure on the exact number but just over 30 APs and its flawless, real quality kit.