Cisco Aironet 1500 Series Access Points (discontinued) vs. Cisco Meraki Wireless Access Point

Cisco Aironet 1550 Series Access Points is very useful for outdoor locations that are more exposed to the wilderness or the weather, which provides uninterrupted wifi access during high winds and bad weather. It also is useful for hazardous locations that are prone to danger or wildlife. Unfortunately, it would not be appropriate to get a Cisco Aironet 1550 Series Access Point if it is only needed for basic wifi use, or indoor use, as the extra features and price would not be necessary.

Incentivized

I think the best solutions for Meraki APs are kind of that remote office branch office type of situation where you need to provide coverage for say a restaurant or a retail location, but you have less skilled IT employees there. So you can remotely configure those devices to ensure that you're running at peak performance. I think the places where that may not be the greatest fit is in a traditional large enterprise. And that's mostly because the IT departments there are a little bit more seasoned and full-featured. And the advantages of Meraki really can't be recognized there as much as they might be.

Incentivized

• Outdoor mesh bridging of access points brings significant cost savings to many of our production facilities. Deploying mesh APs is a significant cost reduction over trenching conduit to connect remote areas via fiber.
• Cisco APs are extremely resilient, with a failure rate of below 5% in some of our harshest environments.
• Cisco APs have the intelligence to identify wireless interference sources with Clean Air technology

Incentivized

• Cisco Meraki Wireless does a GREAT job marketing their product and building your trust. They offer free and very informative webinars that offer free gear for your home network. They rely on word of mouth marketing and it simply works. They offer great try and buy programs as well. They stand behind their product and trust the technology.
• Cisco Meraki Wireless administrators dashboard is top notch. Their wireless UI interface is integrated with all other Cisco Meraki Wireless products. This makes it easy to use. It has single-use credentials and is seamless.
• Cisco Meraki Wireless support is also top notch. While they are backed by Cisco, Meraki always feels like you are working with a small business that takes your account seriously. They are specialized and a rare breed in the industry. Getting support from them is a pleasure!

Incentivized

• In the facilities where we operate, we had to put a reinforcement on the ceiling to avoid problems due to the weight of the access point.
• On the appearance, it could be smaller and lighter.
• As for the hardware, I think it's incredible, I don't see any points to improve.

Incentivized

• Depending on your business size and budget, the cloud based subscription model may not acceptable to upper management.
• Must maintain subscription to utilize Cisco Meraki Wireless Access Points.
• Additional functionality and support for Mobile Device Management (MDM) comes with an additional cost if you want telephone support, otherwise it is limited to a certain number of devices and tech support via email only.

Incentivized

There is no other better option than this. It's the line between the commercial Cisco grade AP's and industrial ones.

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.

Everything clear and easy to use

Incentivized

The Meraki dashboard is an excellent tool to administer and manage the Meraki WiFi Access Point. Navigating the dashboard is intuitive and there are lots of use cases on the Meraki site. The dashboard is the key to having a great administrative experience with the product, easy to use, fast to find information.

The Cisco Aironet 1560 Series Access Points served their function well. They were reliable, provided decent speeds, resisted the elements, and provided a good investment. The only downsides were mostly appearance which doesn't matter that much. However, I believe that the tech in the access point is not future proof which is why I did not give it a nine or ten star rating.

Incentivized

Initially I had a problem with the regulatory and channel selection, it was a bug on the AP as it was fairly new, solved by TAC on engineering release, and since then it has been performing flawlessly.

Incentivized

Cisco Meraki support has been very helpful when it comes to troubleshooting and supporting their products. There is an online knowledge base with tons of documentation and there is also 24x7 phone support available as part of the dashboard license. Every time I've called support, the engineer I spoke with has been very informative and dedicated to resolving my problems.

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.

Making the decision to use Aironet is more related to the type of scenario that you have. We chose Aironet because we mainly manage all the network internally and already have Cisco products to integrate with Meraki which is a good option if you are starting from scratch.

Incentivized

I've found that Meraki Wireless Access Points are able to stack up against all of the other access point manufacturers I've used. I think they are more usable and easy to understand when compared to others like Fortinet, Aruba, or traditional Cisco wireless. I do think the features offered are enough for almost all companies looking for a good wifi plan. They have less detailed settings than Aruba and Cisco so if you have complicated deployments they might be missing some options you are after. Keeping it simple is how Meraki wins. They also have a much easier way to do a zero-touch deployment. You can add the access points in the dashboard and get them running very quickly. They can be managed from anywhere without a VPN or local connection which gives them an edge over their competition.

The software of the Cisco Aironet 1560 is highly scalable, the software is very powerful so that the APs can be customized to the maximum and achieve the best performance of the network at the wifi level. The use of it is very easy for people with low knowledge.

It has nothing really to do with the product itself. I think it's more of the positioning of the Meraki dashboard, kind of edging the simplicity over the deep contextual configuration type things. Giving me a little bit more access to tweak certain things would definitely raise that rating.

Incentivized

• With only a few DOA's or failing devices, the AP's are of very high quality.
• We expect them to run stable for many years, which is why our initial investment will be an intelligent choice compared to installing a cheaper product.
• Although the AP's from Cisco is cutting-edge technology, the 802.11ac standard will be considered legacy in a few years, meaning that its a balance to purchase a well-designed product that won't outlast the tech that it provides. Imagine having an investment in a large fleet of high-quality 802.11b AP's 20 years ago. Although they would still be working flawlessly due to their good quality, the bandwidth would probably be unacceptable to most modern consumers.

Incentivized

• KPI generator: Generator of commercial indicators that help us define the client's profile.
• Consumption data: See in which the network is occupying the consumption by application and user.
• Heat zones: See which is the area of ​​interest most traveled by the end user.