Re: Meraki

[Will Froning <will.froning () GMAIL COM>]

Hello Mohamed,

Over the past two years we ran Motorolla, Aruba, Meraki, Ruckus, Cisco,
Juniper and Meru in pilot deployments. Meraki and Meru we ran for the
longest time, about 6 month each (different buildings on campus). Meraki
is simple and has great reporting, but doesn't support tunneling the
traffic back to a local controller for "IP Mobility" if that is a concern.

Security Hat Response
---------------------
With regards to security, Aruba is the best. After that would be Cisco
then Juniper. It's about equal for the rest (Motorolla might be slightly
above the pack). It just means the security operations are done more so
on the wire rather than in the air or on the controller for those at the
bottom of the list.

Networking Hat Response
-----------------------
Both Meru and Meraki collapse under heavy load (like during conferences
or club fairs) in our experience. In high density locations you also
have to change the deployment method with Meru, it gets ugly.

The per AP support cost over 3 years with Meraki ended up being higher
than with a lot of others, which reduced it's appeal.

In the end we chose Ruckus for all the reason Jeff describes below, and
the concurrent client numbers are completely ridiculous. One engineer
said they limit the concurrent clients to 256 per AP in software and
have increased that number for special client. Recently they released an
AP that can support 500 concurrent clients (WOW). We also tested their
outdoor APs against the Motorolla "drum" and Ruckus outperformed the
drum in every way.

A big hit against Ruckus is terrible reporting. We have to send the AP
logs to Splunk to get anything decent. If you want to tunnel traffic
back to a controller, their controllers are underpowered as compared to
Cisco or Juniper.

Juniper (trapeze) was the next best in our tests with their newest APs;
they were also the cheapest.

Aruba controllers are feature rich monsters -- think spork. They do
everything and can even control non-Aruba devices (for a fee of course).
Their APs weren't anything special.

Now we are looking to replace our entire Cisco wireless with Ruckus and
also to push Ruckus into the dorms. In total it will come to about 1500 APs.

I could keep writing, so if you have specific questions shoot them over.

Thanks,
Will

Jeff Moore wrote:
> We didnt Try Meraki just Cisco(which we had a large implementation of),
> Brocade(motorolla products), and Ruckus. And I would Highly Highly
> recommend the Ruckus. Take a look at this write up below. Our experience
> was that and then some. Plus the amount of clients that we can have on a
> single AP is staggering compared to the rest. This was a year ago so I
> am sure that all the big boys are doing the Beam Forming now so it may
> be apples to apples but between the beam forming and the volume there
> was simply nothing that could compete. Keep in mind that they only do a
> basic but increasingly good job with security. You will want to plan on
> separate security appliances etc.
>
> Again this is old news but do look for beamforming and multiple radios
> for better throughput and longer range.
>
> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/beamforming-wifi-ruckus,2390.html
>
> Jeff Moore
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 12:33 PM, Hall, Rand <hallr () merrimack edu
> <mailto:hallr () merrimack edu>> wrote:
>
>     We've got an 18 month old deployment of around 350 Meraki APs.
>     Trouble free. 
>                
>     Rand
>      
>     Rand P. Hall
>     Director, Network Services                 askIT!
>     Merrimack College
>     978-837-3532 <tel:978-837-3532>
>     rand.hall () merrimack edu <mailto:rand.hall () merrimack edu>
>
>     If I had an hour to save the world, I would spend 59 minutes
>     defining the problem and one minute finding solutions. – Einstein
>
>
>
>     On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 1:53 PM, Mohamed Elhindi <melhindi () uwlax edu
>     <mailto:melhindi () uwlax edu>> wrote:
>
>         Hello Everyone
>
>          
>
>         Currently we are  evaluating Merakifor our wireless. Please
>         e-mail us if you are a currently using Meraki, how is working
>         for you  and any other information you are willing to share  
>
>          
>
>         Dr. Mohamed A. Elhindi
>         Assistant Vice Chancellor- Chief Information Officer
>
>         University of  Wisconsin-La Crosse
>         1725 State street
>
>         La Crosse, WI 54601, USA
>         Phone:  608-785-8662 <tel:608-785-8662>|  Fax: 608-785-8306
>         <tel:608-785-8306>
>
>          
>
>         Please direct scheduling requests to Cynthia Carlson. 
>         ccarlson () uwlax edu <mailto:ccarlson () uwlax edu>
>
>          
>
>          
>
>          
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Jeff Moore
> Desk (503) 877-4707 <https://www.google.com/voice?pli=1#phones>
> Cell (503) 9 <https://www.google.com/voice?pli=1#phones>10-0756
> Mail () JeffMoore com

-- 
Will Froning
Will.Froning () GMail com