Cisco WLC controllers are good but not a scalable option. We have 10 deployed and it is a pain to keep them all updated on the same code without DNAC. I just love to deploy with a controller that needs the APs to check into. Cisco Meraki MR is one big controller for multiple …
Meraki - ease of management. Negative - cost device and annual licensing, especially we comparing Meraki APs to Ubiquiti. This becomes a harder selling point because of the comparative cost.
[Cisco] Meraki [MR] costs more but generally seems to work better for us. Our older Ubiquiti kit seemed to struggle with people roaming across the building, especially with Macbooks. We have had no such issues with [Cisco[ Meraki [MR].
Because of its robustness and ease of integration with the Cisco portfolio and also because [it has the] possibility to integrate the whole Meraki solutions portfolio. The security gear is easy-to-use and easy-to-implement. It gives you the possibility to have an enterprise …
Meraki MR had a lot more features and [we] liked the dashboard feel and how they organized it more than the other vendors. I also know that Cisco is a good brand and have heard of them a lot more. The deployment was very easy from what I read online compared to Ubiquiti which …
I believe UniFi has a great product line and has very similar management capabilities to Cisco Meraki MR. What UniFi does not provide, however, is technical support. That business is essentially outsourced to other businesses willing to do that. Depending on the deployment, …
Cisco Meraki; Aruba; Juniper: I've looked at all of these. I have a ton of experience deploying and using Cisco Meraki. I love their solution. You get such a high level of technology with all the protections afforded by Cisco on the backend. However, the primary reason I choose …
Ubiquiti is the worst of all network products I've ever used - with the worst support. Even Netgear - as much of a joke as they are - have better products and support.
We have compared other lines of wireless APs and have not been able to find a reason to switch. Ubiquiti's pricing model wins compared to Cisco and other's subscription-based models. We cannot find enough functionality in the more expensive lines to justify switching.
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.
In the past few months we purchased thousands of dollars in brand new networking equipment from Ubiquiti. IT DOES NOT WORK CORRECTLY We bought 2 sets of hardware. 1 for home office and 1 for work. They both have the same issue (internet stops working). We have emailed literally dozens of times with customer service and they have not been able to resolve the issue. We have requested escalation to more trained technicians and have asked them to log into our system to assess. None of this has happened and our internet continues to intermittently work.
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.
Most of the AP's are highly reliable and can be used indoors or in covered outdoor spaces.
Outdoor Mesh AP's with an external directional antenna can effectively cover outdoor spaces with dual band wifi better than much more expensive APs.
Unifi Protect via the Cloud Key Gen2+ is probably the slickest, most affordable IP camera system on the market right now.
Unifi controller is powerful yet simple to administrate.
Remote management of entire networks through a single pane of glass is easy to accomplish with the Unifi controller.
Cloud Key Gen2 solves problems with the first Cloud Key wiht a built-in battery backup.
When you are "full stack" Unifi with wifi, network switches and gateways, the control you can wield over a network in just a few clicks and the amount of data you can glean from a quick glance in the controller is incredibly impressive. It makes an IT guy wish every product/service could be so tightly and well-integrated.
Community support is excellent, Unifi staff monitors their official forums and responds to almost every thread.
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.
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
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.
UniFi's system is intuitive in how options are placed and explained throughout the interface. What is not directly explainable within the interface, Ubiquiti does provide several knowledgebase documents explaining best practices and methods of troubleshooting when things don't go exactly right. We've been using them for over three years, and the benefits vastly outweigh any negatives we could come up with on the equipment and system.
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.
Support tickets can be proactively created within the dashboard with full detailed documentation. The Ubiquiti website provides detailed documentation on support. Forum and user groups also provide the interested community with information that covers all aspects of issues or questions users can encounter with the latest and most updated information.
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.
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.
Ubiquiti is overall easier to work with. There is no special training needed to accomplish many of the things required with a Cisco product. Since my time is stretched thin, I need something that I can manage without being weighed down by command-line communications. Also, I am able to use my wireless devices to maintain every Ubiquiti device on my network.
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.
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.
The access points and switch were extremely affordable and we've had minimal downtime over the life of the products.
The switch was in our main rack and there was a bug in the firmware that would reboot the switch if you made a change to one of the switch ports (that was not in use at the time). This caused our entire organization to have a network outage, in the middle of the day. Fortunately we didn't have any customer refunds to issue. We've had to purchase different switches for the main racks, and place the UniFi switch in a better suited place.
