At time of turn up on the new APs we understand those switch port changes will need to be made. Fortunately, the team that turns up the AP also has the ability to make any necessary switch config modifications. Have we ironed that out 100%, no. Will it increase time to activate each AP, yes. However, in our eyes it was worth it. You can follow up with me at the end of the summer to see if I am singing the same tune!
We have been struggling with our existing IP space management on the wireless side anyway due to the geographical location of the controllers compared to building/AP. Our main pain point here being the controllers and which APs they could manage due to code levels. We certainly hope that a cloud based controller will take care of this for us. This problem will not go away until we reach 100% Meraki, which is going to take quite some time. We see the opportunity to rectify this issue as a benefit and get things to match to the wired side where we can map building-to-subnet(s). On the wireless side we do not map user VLANs across cores or data centers. The way we “get away” with this is that we do not provide WiFi coverage outdoors. So, when a user leaves a building they (most of the time depending on RF bleed) disconnect from WiFi and reconnect in the new building. This new building’s APs could be on a different controller and therefore they get a new IP. We haven’t finalized our IP plan yet, but we hope to reduce the re-ip’ing with the cloud base controller. Yes, APs continue to operate if connection to the cloud goes down. But, it’s the cloud .. it never fails! All that gets sent to the cloud is meta data. User traffic stays local. If there is an outage you cannot perform any of the management/analysis functions. I do not know of availability to see how Meraki’s cloud itself is functioning with regards to resource utilization. Meraki’s cloud is custom build for just their management platforms. Other vendors use AWS/Azure/etc. Obviously, there are pros and cons to both approaches. - Kyle From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <[email protected]> On Behalf Of James Helzerman Sent: Monday, May 11, 2020 10:32 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Meraki at large universities Thanks for the information. How do you feel about the architecture change? From my understanding from the past, you have to trunk vlans to every AP. There is no longer a central connection point for better IP space management, which makes sense if they are a cloud managed product. Do you see this a problem or benefit? How do you work out your subnets per building? Do you trunk user vlans across the core and or data center? Do APs continue to operate if they lose connection to the cloud? Do you have access to your specific cloud instance to make sure resources are acceptable? Thanks again for any additional information you can provide. -Jimmy On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 12:24 PM Kyle Ragan <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: We are currently a Cisco Catalyst shop with over 5,000 AP’s in use, plus a couple buildings with Aruba, but have decided that all future deployments will be Meraki. Our first project is going to be with ~480 Meraki AP’s (mixed internal & external antennae and some hospitality APs) in our main library. I can’t answer many of your questions with regards to experience because we are not there, yet. However, Meraki did provide us with contacts at some of their largest customers and we were able to speak with them. The customers were candid about some issues early on (pre-Cisco), but said since the acquisition things have been very stable. Also, many of the issues described were with regards to the Meraki switch and security appliances. Very little to do with the APs themselves. We decided to go with Meraki due to the value proposition of everything that is included in the single AP license. To license a similar catalyst AP the costs were outrageous, plus all the associated appliances required to make use of those metrics. Another big factor was the commitment from Meraki to always support their APs regardless of age and never be “forced” into upgrading due to EOL/EOS. We are currently dealing with that on campus with both APs and controllers. We really wanted to get out of that game. Other than Cisco catalyst we also considered Mist. What concerned us with Mist was the lack of experience with large deployment and high density environments. Also, at the time they did not have a hospitality AP which we use in dorms, offices, and some other creative areas. We would have pretty quickly become their largest customer and that’s not something that I was willing to do. Hope this helps at least somewhat. Kyle Ragan Associate Director, Network Engineering and Operations [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> 303.735.4008 Office of Information Technology University of Colorado Boulder 3645 Marine Street, Rm 212H Boulder, CO 80309 [cid:[email protected]] From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> On Behalf Of James Helzerman Sent: Monday, May 11, 2020 7:58 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Meraki at large universities Hi. Is anyone looking at or currently using Meraki in a large university? I am curious as to how far their product has come after a few years from the Cisco purchase. For sizing purposes I am looking at deployments of 500 or more Meraki APs with 8+ APs in high density auditoriums and/or seat 400-600 students. In particular I am looking for information on: * How many APs total do you have on your campus? * What is the peak number of concurrent connections you have seen on the system? * What is the largest high density area you have covered? How many APs, special settings, models of AP, etc. * What made you choose Meraki over different vendors? * Do you have multiple vendors on your campus? If so which ones? * If you had a controller based infrastructure before, what changes did you have to make to your architecture? How much time did it take to do this, what issues did you run into? * What success stories can you share? * What issues do you see or have had with the product? * How customizable are the settings compared to Cisco or Aruba? * What do you like or dont like about the products and/or architecture? Answers dont need to be long or in depth, I am just gauging adoption at larger universities. If you prefer, feel free to direct message me. Thanks for any input you can provide! -Jimmy -- James Helzerman Wireless Network Engineer University of Michigan - ITS Phone: 734-615-9541 ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community -- James Helzerman Wireless Network Engineer University of Michigan - ITS Phone: 734-615-9541 ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community
