Using Meraki in our branch locations, we have a couple of sites with 35 APs, several more with anywhere from just one to a handful. I have zero regrets. The bugs are few and far between. We don’t have many VLANs in these sites, which would be the nut to crack in larger deployments. Here’s an aging article I wrote on that https://www.toolbox.com/tech/cloud/blogs/why-were-not-all-flocking-to-mist-and-meraki-wireless-the-layer-2-situation-101518/
But VLANs aside, it is soooooo nice not having a buggy controller and semi-worthless bloated NMS to keep up, given that those are Meraki’s problem. We are still controller-based on the big WLAN, so we are living in both worlds. Lee Badman (mobile) On Dec 31, 2020, at 11:38 AM, Ian Lyons <ily...@rollins.edu> wrote: I will provide a disclaimer that "things cloud" are not my favorite-in the regards that you have to prove that your network is not the problem before vendors truly commit in a down/crisis issue. But the new world order is here. Having said that, have people who have gone to the cloud have diverse end user client gear? Ipads,Iphones, IOT, PC,Mac etc. Going back in time, I had Meru and RingMaster and with a pure PC client I never had an issue. As soon as the Macs etc (anything other than a PC) came online, chaos ensued. Solution was to go with a newer (or better-sorry Meru) on prem controller and when Apple did the "walled garden" fiasco, the controller vendors did a GREAT job un'effing what Apple did to us (again as a school in Sept/Oct) -just as classes were in full swing-with students who blithely get the latest greatest Apple software and then were not able to connect to the network Now, a lot of time has gone by since then and almost everyone has a cloud-based product in the oven...with various levels of baking completed. My question: With the "lack of knobs" (our Meraki sales person kept saying that, but the intention I think was "it just works") in cloud solutions for wifi vs on prem controllers... and a diverse (BYOD) environment are the cloud solutions solid? Or has anyone felt that the cloud has been holding them back? Just curious as the next evolution is here and I am genuinely intrigued on how things have evolved. Cheers Ian J Lyons Senior Network Engineer - Rollins College 401.413.1661 Cell 407.628.6396 Desk ________________________________ From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> on behalf of Rand Hall <rand.h...@gmail.com> Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2020 10:01 To: WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU <WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Wireless Upgrade Project * External Email * After 9 years of Meraki's cloud controller I couldn't imagine going back. (And I was a huge cloud skeptic...and still am to an extent). On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 10:22 AM Luis Quispe <lqui...@stevens.edu<mailto:lqui...@stevens.edu>> wrote: Hello everyone, Hope you’re all having a relaxing time off before getting back into the new year. We’re looking for some feedback from those that have recently gone through a campus wifi upgrade/change. From the non-technical perspective, we plan to communicate with our user base for all phases of the project. Does anyone have any suggestions on communicating with the users? Not so much on the how, but the information provided to the user, or requested information that can be useful. On the technical perspective, has anyone gone from on-prem controller to controller-less and cloud management? We will be conducting POCs with both Extreme Networks and Juniper Mist and as you may know, both of these solutions are Cloud managed solutions. We are also doing a POC with Aruba, but there’s a little gray area there when it comes to controller-less. What I mean is that, we were told we could go the route of Instant-AP with Cloud-Central, but given what we have about 1800 APs, we should prefer to go with the on-prem solution instead. Here are some questions: * I know that there are a few schools here that are Aruba Wireless customers, please comment on going to the newer version 8 OS (we are still on 6). * If anyone has any comments on going with or tested either Mist or Extreme, please do so! With administrations now pushing to go to the cloud when possible, has anyone considered going controller-less? * Has anyone considered AX as a driver to change, or waiting to see what happens with Wifi6E? * While most wireless solutions would provide decent management dashboards, does anyone have any comments on which provides useful information for troubleshooting? Mist provides many points of user-experience information that could help with troubleshooting issues, does anyone have feedback on that? * For those that have experience with Extreme, has anyone employed that Fabric-Attach process to do without having to manually bridge vlans to the access points? Was this really a game changer? * With the Next-Gen solutions talking about all the analytics available, does that really help the system auto-tune power and channel properly? I know this this a lot, any feedback will greatly appreciated, Luis Quispe Senior Network Administrator Division of IT Stevens Institute of Technology ********** 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. 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