Alcatel-Lucent OmniAccess Wireless Access Points vs. Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points

One of best use cases for using OmniAccess Wire Access Point is where we have dense no. of users as client associated capacity is very good. Also one of the use case is when administrator wants different PSK for each user for authentication. OmniAccess WAP supports in better way.

So I've used the Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points product not just in the organization I'm working for now, but across most vertical markets in my career. So what I've found is, for instance, the range of antennas that were available for Meraki are not as comprehensive as they are with the traditional Cisco wireless, for instance. So that's one of the, but one the pros always with Meraki is it's just ease of deployment and it also has some automated features. For instance, if it starts to lose connectivity on its wired or it will automatically mesh, which can create some interesting scenarios

Incentivized

• Flexibility in terms of deployment, management
• Better security feature
• Application awareness ,WIPS
• DPSK
• Better client associated count

• 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

• No of Interfaces
• must have a variety in terms of MIMO
• better throughput

• It's a possibility, but I don't know because we haven't gone down that road yet for our division, but incorporating the older Cisco equipment into the Cisco Meraki Cloud and stuff, I know that I was told that we could do that. We haven't done it yet. I just don't know what products it can be done with. That would be cool. It makes it obviously much easier to manage too.

Incentivized

The Cisco Meraki WiFi Access Point dashboard and support license is mandatory so to continue usage we will need to renew the license. We may opt to purchase a more current WiFi generation device if something newer is available at that time. Currently, happy with the use of the dashboard as it is very feature rich.

To get basic functionality doesn't take long. Set up a new Meraki Dashboard activate the licenses and get internet connection for the APs and you are more or less done. The Dashboard will find your items and you're good to go.

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

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.

Have used Cisco Meraki access point earlier having management on cloud and is on license (subscription basis). But Alcatel OmniAccess Points have management on cloud, on premise as well which means to say flexibility in terms of management. We had one requirement where we number of user is large which is going to connect on access point but Cisco Meraki only supports 200 users per radio whereas OmniAccess point have better client associated capacity with 524 per radio.

We were more on a Cisco Wireless Controller set up, which takes a lot longer to control and that's why we've actually gone through a cloud-based product, which is very easy compared with the old traditional way that we used to have. It's more ease of software. They've got very similar features, but it's easy to set up and maintain into the future.

Incentivized

It fits my company and these needs perfectly, but kind of like I talked about a little earlier. If you're going to get into a very high dense building or multi-building campus where you need to deploy hundreds of or thousands of these, you're going to run into complications with being able to get the network to fit within your scope of the Meraki MR. And you have to do some, they have stuff to do it, but you have to break it out. And then you're starting to do a little bit more configuring than you'd want for an easy config setup.

Incentivized

• Better Roaming
• Ease of Management
• Better performance

• 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