Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points vs. Extreme Wireless Access Points

The Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points is a good solution although not for everyone. Cost wise it is more expensive than competition. Technically speaking, if you are going for a full Cisco Meraki solution from firewall, switches, WAP, and management app, it requires a solid technical understanding of where each part and piece falls. If you have the money and the technical capabilities (in house or outsourced) then it is a solid platform that leans on Cisco's respectable history in the communications and infrastructure industry.

Incentivized

The Extreme access point solution has been used in the cooperative scenario with VLANs for employees in access through 802.1x authentication and also for guests through the captive portal that allows access of people for a limited time and prior registration. The equipment has great performance and connection speed and supports a high density of users connected at the same time without lag and crashes. The management of this equipment is being carried out through software with cloud management and is accessed by our infrastructure team to configure and monitor alerts.

Incentivized

• It's cloud based, so as long as we have an internet connection, we can access it. Whenever we push a change, it's one stop like a single pane of glass to manage all our equipment. And so that's what I liked about it.

Incentivized

• Ease of use and Management. The process of implementing APs is straight forward and managing the wireless infrastructure is quite simple and efficient.
• Coverage: we are very happy with the distance each AP coverages in our warehouses without having any drop issues or over implementing APs.
• Cost competitive versus other cloud managed wi-fi solutions such as Cisco, Aruba or Mist.

Incentivized

• So the Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points dashboard, it's a little bit like comparing Apple and Android. So with Android you can do a lot more configuration, whereas with Meraki there are a lot of assumptions about a radio resource management. There are a lot of assumptions around, for instance, when it does a heat map, it's a heat map, which is a population density rather than a wireless coverage heat map. So that can cause confusion because normally when you look at heat map, you're looking at, that is a metric for how well it's performing rather than how many devices are using it. So I think that's always at the bone of contention around one of the things it can do.

Incentivized

• We use WiNG still for our WAP's, which is ok to do administrative tasks from, but it could be better. However, Extreme Wireless Access Points is moving everything to CloudIQ, which is better in every way and something we plan to move to soon.
• The logo on the access points makes you want to mount the AP's sideways like a diamond because otherwise the logo looks crooked, and that just looks bad, so you have to take extra time sometimes, depending on the mount, to get the AP to look square.

Incentivized

Reliability and Performance: Reflect on whether they provide consistent, high-quality connectivity in your environment. Cost-effectiveness: Weigh the value they deliver against their cost and any alternatives. Support and Usability: Think about the ease of use of the Meraki dashboard and the quality of customer support. Scalability: Assess how well they align with your organization's growth plans

Incentivized

The Cisco Meraki MR web interface is best in class when it comes to network management. While some networking knowledge is needed to understand what you are doing, no specialized training in any one specific operating system is required to design a whole network.

Incentivized

Extreme Wireless Access Points are easy to manage. They are easy to deploy and install. The hardware and firmware are reliable. There a number of things to be improved since we are still using the WiNG platform, but all of those things will be much better when we migrate to CloudIQ.

Incentivized

We have been deploying Meraki since last 8 years and even the first one deployed seems to be working fine till now!

Incentivized

Extreme Wireless Access Points can support all our devices, even in high capacity areas. They are easy to manage and get basic information. There was a time back around 2017-2018 where people's devices needed to make sure they were using the latest wireless drivers; otherwise, people were having connection issues. Other than that time period, we were able to have fewer complaints from end users.

Incentivized

Meraki support is usually top notch. The are quick to respond and stick with an issue until it is resolved. One of the difficulties I've had with Meraki MRs is the limited ability the customer has in troubleshooting. Much of the more technical aspects of resolution can only be accessed by the Meraki support team, meaning dedicated IT teams are reliant on them when more complicated issues arise.

Incentivized

Support was always responsive and willing to help, but at times did not know when to call it and send a replacement to stop the bleeding. I respect that fact that they wanted to get the solution working, and the wanting to learn more and understand, but at times you cant do that at the expense of the customer.

Incentivized

There were documents that detailed how the WiFi Access Point was to be installed and mounted. The only issue was to cable the device, we use a third party for this type of work and typically has to be performed after normal business hours. Other than that, the installation was easy.

Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points are very easy to install, configure, and manage. Centralized management offers excellent features, and especially if you have multiple locations where the access points are installed, they're very easy to manage, saving you a lot of time. If a location wants to expand or reduce its Wi-Fi network, this is incredibly easy. Integration with other Cisco network components is smooth, connecting seamlessly. Updating and layer 7 analysis help create a stable network.

Incentivized

We are running Ubiquiti APs for a separate network need in one of our buildings - which we are also happy with. But the difference between Ubiquiti and ExtremeWireless is vast - I cannot find most of the settings I'm used to seeing with ExtremeWireless in the Ubiquiti GUI. That said - you pay for what you get. ExtremeWireless is about 5x the cost per AP than Ubiquiti is. The reliability of uptime with the hardware, as well as the cloud service from ExtremeWireless, has been fantastic to utilize.

Incentivized

As far as I know, it's 10. I mean, because like I said, I manage stuff in the south. I have coworkers that manage it in the north. And so the scalability of it to be able to be go in and see the configurations of the ones in the north as well as they can see in the south. So across the board, it works really well for how widespread out it is.

Incentivized

• Uptime has improved significantly. The dashboard automatically keeps devices up to date by scheduling upgrades at remote times (say 2am on a Sunday)
• Swapping to Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points has reduced the management overhead. No more long controller software hardware upgrades and obviously no more need for beefy central controllers.

Incentivized

• Initial expense is high due to pricey hardware, though recurring costs make the ROI better over the long term.
• Remote access is fairly simple and we can deploy entire home setups or even small offices very quickly. This is provides good ROI to get the business moving quickly.

Incentivized