Cisco offers the Meraki brand of Ethernet switches.
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UniFi WiFi Access Points
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Ubiquiti Networks in San Jose provides the UniFi wi-fi access points. The enterprise products support 1,000+ client capacity, long-range 6 GHz performance, and 10 GbE PoE connectivity with native high availability architecture for critical enterprise environments.
Cisco name opens a lot of doors, and the Meraki MS adds resilience, features and the promisse of easy management to do the job and to be approved easely.
They are similar low-cost equipment that has some of the features of Cisco Meraki MS, but in general, we always go for the industry giant because of the support it offers.
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.
Cisco Meraki's solutions closely provide the benefits Ubiquiti provides with a more consumer-level financial accessibility. Ubiquiti has been exponentially increasing its attention and being implemented by home users means gaining a huge market within users that are attentive …
One way of looking at network equipment is by grouping all into two categories: Standalone, and Centrally Managed. Most home or SOHO network equipment is standalone, meaning each device is configured individually. If you need to adjust settings off-site, you need to allow it …
Unifi trails the competitors in the switch/gateway category but exceeds all competitors in WiFi and IP cameras. Cisco Meraki equipment is too expensive along with monthly costs. Netgear equipment is fine for simple networks but a small increase in upfront spend will get you …
Ubiquiti is a large product line. The switches are great, but only layer 2, and don't have a ton of super advanced features. So they won't meet everyone's needs. The Access points have most features people need, and are a fantastic performer for the price. The UniFi Security …
A Cisco Meraki solution should always be in the toolbox for a small-medium office. Especially for a project team that moves around a bit. It is very easy to deploy and if after 6 months the project moves to another location, re-deployment times are much faster than traditional kit. Whilst it could do the job. It is not at the point of replacing a large corporate office of Catalyst Switches but we feel it does not need to do that necessarily.
I love the equipment for small-scale commercial solutions and quality without the price tag. I might not recommend their products for a large organization with multiple locations and servers. However, the GUI interface will allow remote access and setup across the network. I think this is a great solution for small businesses and families or home office solutions, provided there is some IT knowledge for setup and maintenance.
I think when it comes to the Meraki products, it's just the ease of use and ease of troubleshooting because it's all cloud-based, easy to access from anywhere I can literally get on now and troubleshoot. So I think it's just the ease of use, which is great.
So compared to the Cisco Catalyst series, there isn't that many dolls you can turn and just optimize stuff. So particularly I'm not quite sure around how stuff like MACsec would work on the MS. It's something that I've really got to look into more and the documentation isn't really that obvious for that feature.
Initial configuration of access points can be rather tricky. Each one I have installed was a complete pain to get setup and connected with the UniFi Controller software. I never worked out what causes me problems, but thankfully once I've stumbled through the correct procedure, it does work completely reliably after that, for years on end.
The UniFi Controller software will nag you to share usage data. When offered to opt-in, I choose not to do so, but you'll eventually be nagged again on a future login.
Some of the 'tooltips' within the Controller software could be more informative.
At the time I am writing this, Meraki MS has conver all of the required needs. Is really easy to implement, the dashboard helps a lot with the implementation and troubleshooting process, the devices are very robust and you can count with the meraki support in case you face a physical or logical issue with them.
The Meraki dashboard is one of the most intuitive and user-friendly network management interfaces available. It simplifies many traditionally complex tasks, such as VLAN configuration, port management, and firmware updates, making it easy to deploy and manage networks without extensive CLI work. Features like zero-touch provisioning, remote troubleshooting, and real-time monitoring significantly reduce the time and effort needed for network administration. The reason it’s not a perfect 10 is that while Meraki is great for most standard networking tasks, it can feel somewhat limiting for advanced configurations. Additionally, the reliance on the cloud dashboard means there’s very little local management option, which could be a drawback in environments with strict compliance requirements. Overall, it’s one of the easiest networking solutions to work with, but power users might find certain advanced features lacking.
Ubiquiti makes great Access points at various tiers provided far better coverage and throughput than consumer-grade wireless repeaters and routers. We have not had any performance complaints from guests or from the administration who use the wifi on a daily basis.
Cisco Meraki MS switches are quite reliable, robust, and incredibly rare to experience failures. Most of the time, as with all equipment, problems arise from incorrect configurations, not from poor performance of the equipment itself. In any case, when a hardware or software issue arises, Meraki support responds promptly, and if equipment replacement is required, the service is dispatched quickly and efficiently.
In deployments using Cisco Meraki switches, no issues with performance, slowness, or loss have been reported; overall, performance is quite good. Communication and integration with other devices and brands is quite good, and the devices rarely fail.
Meraki support is excellent. They are also highly proactive. They literally replaced all of a particular model of our MS switches when it was discovered that they were not sure about the longevity of a particular chassis fan inside those switches. Without us having to do anything other than ask, they shipped us all new replacements (with a better fan in them) for the 10 or so of the switches that were in the affected model group, and we shipped the defective ones back to them int he same packaging, prepaid. None of the recalled switches had ever experienced a fan failure, but they were not willing to let them run in a production environment. I like that. Meraki MS support staff are also quick to get back to you and very knowledgeable about their product. I actually contact our Meraki rep to instigate a support case (although i could call support directly), and he gets the details from me first, then opens the ticket for us and explains it to support. This means that I only even need to talk to one person, and I like that, too. Meraki MS switches are designed to be essentially "plug and play", so support is generally not needed unless the end user is not following the deployment and operation guides
Ubiquiti support is minimal, which is said to help decrease the cost of the equipment. However, with many reports of emails going directly to the Ubiquiti support line taking days to hear a response, you're better off either engaging with the community forums for help from fellow UniFi users or reaching out to a reseller that has training on the equipment that can assist.
The In-person trainings are very useful because allow you to ask questions in live to the instructor. In general, most training sessions have been delivered directly through the Meraki platform with on-demand videos. However, having a dedicated instructor has allowed us to address specific topics that in some cases aren't covered in depth in the courses.
The Cisco Meraki learning platform is very user-friendly and offers all kinds of videos, reading material, and forums related to the different courses. There are courses for specific topics and also dedicated learning paths for certifications. In both cases, the content and explanation are easy to understand and provide highly didactic examples, sample equipment configurations, and quizzes at the end of each lesson to assess the acquired knowledge.
In general, the implementation process was relatively simple, given that we already have a relationship with the partners and experience in other implementations, from the acquisition of licenses, purchase of equipment, configuration of switches and support from the Meraki team, everything has been easy to manage and the support from both the partner and the Meraki team has been excellent.
Catalyst is good but it requires CLI configuration which can be very complex for beginners because they tend to forget commands. Cisco Meraki MS takes out the complexity by having a GUI, and another advantage is the risk of committing bad configuration is minimized (such as typing a typo in a long command for a vlan or IP address). The GUI's just a lot cleaner to work with.
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.
I would say probably eight. I think there's a lot of, the scalability is very nice and I've definitely deployed a lot of sites quickly. I think for us right now that we have to pivot away from manual configurations and using automated configurations. And so just being sure we prevent things like drift between sites is kind of important right now for us. And so I think that's the next steps for us in that product. And so I think if there was better documentation or better best practices about how to automate and deploy standardized, I think that would help.
I can't think of any negatives. Positive, well, I had nothing but positive things to say about it. Like I said, multiple times. Of course it does give us so much visibility, which is important to us. As far as on a daily basis, I mean the dashboard daily of course, and the use of the phone. It's just also they keep innovating and adding new features to it, which help us lower our troubleshooting times and uptime. And just the overall use of the product itself.
