Cisco Catalyst Center vs. Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Catalyst Center
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Catalyst Center provides an intent-based platform for managing enterprise networks across campus, branch, and edge environments. It combines automation, analytics, and assurance to streamline IT operations, improve security posture, and reduce manual tasks. With integratedAI/ML-driven insights, policy-based controls, and end-to-end visibility across wired and wireless infrastructures, Catalyst Center empowers IT teams toproactively detect issues, enforce compliance, and accelerate…N/A
Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
Cisco's Meraki MR Series is a wireless LAN solution.N/A
Pricing
Cisco Catalyst CenterCisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco Catalyst CenterCisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Catalyst CenterCisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
Considered Both Products
Cisco Catalyst Center
Chose Cisco Catalyst Center
More familiar with cisco products

Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
Chose Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
Meraki for the easier choice. Lately Meraki have climbed up the ladder with the new MS390 widening the offer. For me I see Meraki for the small/mid market customer and Cisco Classic more for the bigger customer with more specific needs. But security must follow along with the …
Best Alternatives
Cisco Catalyst CenterCisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
Small Businesses
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.1 out of 10
WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
WatchGuard Secure Wi-Fi Cloud
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Intermapper
Intermapper
Score 8.4 out of 10
Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Cisco Aironet 1800 Series Access Points (discontinued)
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Score 9.0 out of 10
Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points
Cisco Catalyst 9100 Access Points
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Catalyst CenterCisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(234 ratings)
9.1
(143 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(7 ratings)
6.4
(5 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(17 ratings)
8.8
(8 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
7.7
(2 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(32 ratings)
8.2
(26 ratings)
Online Training
7.3
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(3 ratings)
Configurability
7.3
(1 ratings)
7.1
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.1
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(80 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.7
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.1
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Catalyst CenterCisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
Security with identity-based access control and segmentation via integration with Cisco ISE, supporting zero-trust architectures. Centralized Management for a large campus environment with centralized management of wired and wireless equipment. Automation of tasks like: provisioning, configuration, and software upgrade, reducing manual effort of those tasks. It could be improved to Multi-Vendor Support.
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Cisco
It's ideal if the company frequently uses mobile devices that need to work on Wi-Fi. It's also ideal if a company has multiple locations. Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points can then be easily deployed and managed via a central Meraki Dashboard. It also offers a powerful content filtering feature within the Cisco Meraki environment. This can be particularly useful for guest networks and in locations where certain content cannot be downloaded, such as a school.It's less suitable if a company has a limited IT budget and the network needs to be continuously expanded. In those cases, the associated license costs can quickly add up. In factories or other robustly built environments, RF tuning isn't feasible. As a result, the signal quality can sometimes be somewhat reduced.
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Pros
Cisco
  • I enjoy having a more modern tool for viewing PSIRTs and CVEs on our catalyst devices.
  • I enjoy all the different views I have for my inventory.
  • I think templates work well for zero day configuration.
  • I love the newer features for showing what configuration is going to be changed and deployed before you deploy it.
  • I like that I can see in-band and out-of-band configuration history.
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Cisco
  • 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.
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Cons
Cisco
  • Granularity. And so for us, and our use case might not be the same as a majority of customers, but we have a environment which frequently changes. So we're not a traditional corporate environment which stays relatively static or still reprovision. We want to reconfigure our environment to meet whatever the needs of our customers are. And at the moment it's like for some of the ways that we have to configure it, we just want to give something a little tap, but we have to hit it with a sledgehammer, which then often has knock on impacts other services.
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Cisco
  • It can expand its radio range in terms of distance reach
  • It can improve it's design as it looks like a plain flat brick
  • I would like to see more integration with security
  • Better solution in segmenting and authentication like clearpass
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
I gave it an 8 because Cisco Catalyst Center offers powerful capabilities for managing our SDA deployment, including automation, assurance, and policy control. It significantly simplifies day-to-day network operations. However, there's still room for improvement in terms of performance, stability, and user experience.
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Cisco
It is a solution that works very well. It is almost like setup and forget, since the solution works. When issues occur, documentation is available with detailed steps on how to solve this problems you are facing, of course Technical Support is always ready to help. We have had instances where an Access Point fails and within 2 days we have the replacement
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Usability
Cisco
Cisco DNA Center is going to help us in security, simplicity and ease of administration. Cisco DNA Center is complete management and control platform that simplifies and streamlines network operations. Cisco DNA Center offers a single dashboard for every core function in your network. With this platform, IT can become more nimble and respond to changes and challenges faster and more intelligently.
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Cisco
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
We have been deploying Meraki since last 8 years and even the first one deployed seems to be working fine till now!
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Support Rating
Cisco
El soporte de CISCO DNA Center es muy bueno, responden a mis dudas pero no he tenido oportunidad de reportar un incidente o determinar un tiempo de respuesta critico. The support of CISCO DNA Center is very good, they answer my questions, but I have not had the opportunity to report an incident or determine a critical response time.
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Cisco
We have not had any issues with the Meraki WiFi Access Point hardware but we did encounter a problem with a Meraki LAN switch that failed to power up. Upon a email into the Meraki Support, they promptly called back and we went over some quick tests to determine a power supply problem. A replacement LAN switch was sent to me the next day.
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Online Training
Cisco
It was informative, but the labs were not available long enough for us to get intimately familiar with CCNA before it was closed. The course instructor was well informed and got us as close to ready as she could.
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Cisco
We started out with using Cisco Prime infrastructure and we migrated to DNA center or Catalyst Center from Prime Infrastructure. We found that it wasn't apples to Apples migration. It wasn't exactly, it wasn't a direct upgrade. There were a lot of key differences, but yeah, I think that that was probably the most similar thing
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Cisco
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.
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Scalability
Cisco
No answers on this topic
Cisco
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.
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • Yeah, I mean that last one for sure. The software independent of the hardware, I mean, it's just easy. They made it so easy to just, and fast and efficient to upgrade your entire organization within days, weeks, months. And you're not spending, your maintenance windows get a lot shorter. You can schedule more maintenance windows just because you know there's going to be some type of consistency with it and there's just, I'm sure there will be a hiccup one day, but there just hasn't really been too many issues with us using that product, especially for maintenance, window upgrades, things like that.
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Cisco
  • 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.
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ScreenShots

Cisco Catalyst Center Screenshots

Screenshot of AIOpsScreenshot of BaselinesScreenshot of PoliciesScreenshot of HealthScreenshot of Network HierarchyScreenshot of PoE

Cisco Meraki MR Wireless Access Points Screenshots

Screenshot of MR57 Cisco Meraki Access Point