Meraki V Ruckus

[BiggieBiggsAB]

Hi Guys, New to this (Recommended to me)- Does anyone here have any pointers worth considering when comparing these two WiFi Solutions for schools?

[DJ-1701]

You are always paying with Meraki year on year to have a working wireless network. When looking at these a couple of years back, it was more cost effective to run Ruckus.

[keyboards]

I think Meraki is a better bit of kit but as said above costs etc

[DalekSec]

(I'm going to be THAT guy)

 

Why not UniFi?

[mdrabble]

Do you use smoothwall? If Yes then I would suggest you avoid Meraki as there are known issues with roaming.

 

Not used Ruckus for over 5 years but was good kit.

 

And as DalekSec said- why not Unif?i I heard some good things about them - I am going to be looking at Unifi very shortly as our Meraki license expires in June.

[Net-Ctrl]

If you require any assistance with Ruckus, please let us know. We can complete free of charge predictive surveys and will review your requirements in order to put the best solution forward.

 

I'd also suggest testing both bits of kit to see which you prefer. If you have time set them up in real-life scenarios with users running HD content so you can see for yourself the performance, but also the GUI etc.

 

Both solutions will work in your environment, it's also about choosing the right integrator to advise correctly, and install/configure as required.

[chazzy2501]

I was talking to a stone person the other day (about Meraki), they're still offering the 10 years for 5 licensing deal for education, they're also offering like for like hardware replacement on the hardware. (that's a new one on me)

[yac2016]

(I'm going to be THAT guy)

 

Why not UniFi?

 

I soooo wanted to be that guy...Unifi everyday over those expensive products.

[Norphy]

I was talking to a stone person the other day (about Meraki), they're still offering the 10 years for 5 licensing deal for education, they're also offering like for like hardware replacement on the hardware. (that's a new one on me)

 

Even with a ten year license, the whole Meraki licensing model makes me balk. School budgets aren't improving and with the current stupidity going on in Whitehall at the moment, I can't see things getting better any time soon. We are going to be replacing our wireless network in the next few months and I made an conscious decision to exclude Meraki from the process. Reason being, I can very easily see the situation in ten years time that anything that we put in now will still be in use because it will be a) good enough b) too expensive to renew. I don't want the organisation to be in the situation where they can't afford to renew the wireless LAN but still be stuck with an expensive bill to keep the thing going.

 

Say whatever you like about all of the others, none of them stop working if you decide not to to pay the maintenance bill.

[mullet_man]

Another vote for Unifi. Moved to it in the summer.

 

No issues and iOS devices happily connect, previously we had an old Meru system that iOS devices just struggled to connect to.

[ADMaster]

Between the two you have listed, Ruckus all the way. I’ve run their kit for the last 5 years.

I too will be specifically excluding Meraki and the like from the process. One of my requirements is no ongoing subscriptions for functionality. If I can afford support and upgrades I’ll pay it, but if I can’t I do not want to loose function.

I’m getting a new network this year, so I’ll probably be starting my own thread soon enough.

[HTCPCP]

I used to be one to go Meraki all day, the kit is great, and what you can do with cloud management is just great, easy to update firmware, and a lot of very nice little touches. A few years ago, it is what I would suggest to all my sites.

Now, however, well its a bit different. I go UniFi or Aruba only now, unless it is a very specialist application (been involved in a town Wi-Fi project, and so a Meraki Mesh system was the one to go for.

[MS2011]

Another vote for Unifi. Moved to it in the summer.

 

No issues and iOS devices happily connect, previously we had an old Meru system that iOS devices just struggled to connect to.

 

Hi

 

Can you provide more info as we want to move to unifi as well. Model of ap’s , did you get third party to do install for you and pricing.

 

Cheers

[yac2016]

AC Pro's check Broadband Buyer. Get one install it and test it, very easy to setup and configure yourself. Only thing you may want to look at is cabling and switch upgrades.

[Reboot_IT]

I've used both systems quite recently and have no complaints around either. I purchased Meraki in my previous role which had 1:1 mobile devices for students so it seemed worthwhile going with Meraki especially as there were/still are incentives such as double term licensing available for education. For a site that isn't 1:1 devices for students, I don't see any issues with Ruckus in which case the decision would come down to costs.

 

In short, find the solution that suits your needs best!

[mullet_man]

Hi

 

Can you provide more info as we want to move to unifi as well. Model of ap’s , did you get third party to do install for you and pricing.

 

Cheers

 

Hi we went for the AC-PROs + 3 of the external ones, I wasn't part of the costing but it was pretty cheap. We used a third party to install and help with the setup of the system.

[AlanD]

I looked carefully at Meraki - and drooled over its web management interface...but eventually decided that once I had got over the excitement of clicking on this and that I probably needed something that I would set and forget. I certainly question the marketing model of wireless solutions that have annual charges for schools - and while Unify may not have the edge on performance I had real difficulty in a classroom with a stop watch to decide whether it was actually any worse. In the end I bought some second hand Aerohive units (over a hundred of them) and managed them with command line rather than buying into their cloud management system (but it wouldn't be a solution for the feint hearted). If I hadn't done that I would have bought unify. I would recommend you buy a couple of unify HD models (you will be able to sell them easily on ebay - probably for as much as you paid for them!). Most of the annual charge merchants will be happy to loan you some kit - including Meraki, Ruckus, Aerohive and others. Yes - this will involve a bit a of effort....but it will tell you whether the premier (Rolls Royce) solutions offer you anything that is worth money compared to the Unify (= Ford Mondeo) solution. I've always been a great believer in second had ford modeo solutions for schools. And try to manage expectation of SMT. A new wireless solution (despite what those seliing it may try to convince you) may not deliver what they (or you) are expecting. "ac" wireless rarely offers higher bandwidth than "n" technology solutions in dense (= school) environments, especially if the devices you are using are not "ac" capable....or if they are "ac" capable are only single stream.

[mattysmith80]

Not sure how far down the route you have gone but we have just swapped out 230 Meraki APs for 230 Ubiquiti Unifi APS across 9 schools (The new 4x4 mimo Nano HD Access Point) and very impressed. Just couldnt stomach the Meraki costs... Cracking product just not for schools budgets anymore

[DanRob]

I'm going to go against the grain here and say that Meraki licensing worked out beneficial for us overall. We're a MAT and purchased for all schools (where cloud based comes into it's own, allowing cross-site roaming etc), negotiated an '11 for the price of 5 years' deal and paid up front. We are therefore GUARANTEED updates, maintenance & support and hardware replacement for 11 years. No other wireless setup we looked at could come close to that level of promise. We previously paid handsomely for Meru kit and 5 years later needed to purchase a new controller, with which our AP320i APs only worked for a further year, essentially leaving us with no room to move; any further firmware updates to our controller would result in needing to purchase new APs, which was cost prohibitive. Risk of this happening with Meraki is 0, any AP revisions are guaranteed to work with their cloud based model; if we have an AP fail in 10 years time they'll send us a working replacement FOC. I can't speak for Ruckus or Unifi, but Meraki worked out well for us, so much so that a few of our sites now use Meraki switching too. It's an interesting concept for management and one that appears to work. I also don't recall it being *THAT* much more expensive than the alternatives we considered when the yearly costs were broken down.

[supportman]

I'm going to go against the grain here and say that Meraki licensing worked out beneficial for us overall. We're a MAT and purchased for all schools (where cloud based comes into it's own, allowing cross-site roaming etc), negotiated an '11 for the price of 5 years' deal and paid up front. We are therefore GUARANTEED updates, maintenance & support and hardware replacement for 11 years. No other wireless setup we looked at could come close to that level of promise. We previously paid handsomely for Meru kit and 5 years later needed to purchase a new controller, with which our AP320i APs only worked for a further year, essentially leaving us with no room to move; any further firmware updates to our controller would result in needing to purchase new APs, which was cost prohibitive. Risk of this happening with Meraki is 0, any AP revisions are guaranteed to work with their cloud based model; if we have an AP fail in 10 years time they'll send us a working replacement FOC. I can't speak for Ruckus or Unifi, but Meraki worked out well for us, so much so that a few of our sites now use Meraki switching too. It's an interesting concept for management and one that appears to work. I also don't recall it being *THAT* much more expensive than the alternatives we considered when the yearly costs were broken down.

Thats an ongoing cost though... Unifi has no ongoing licensing needed which is why its so special and its cheaper to buy up front as well.

 

We have Aruba and are moving to Unifi soon due to this.

[DanRob]

Thats an ongoing cost though... Unifi has no ongoing licensing needed which is why its so special and its cheaper to buy up front as well.We have Aruba and are moving to Unifi soon due to this.

It most certainly is an ongoing cost, I simply wanted to communicate that there's deals to be had with Meraki and that (imo of course) the future proofing offered is probably close to unbeatable. Some people value the certainty, and the way we purchased we're certain that we don't need to re-asses our WiFi provision for the next 10+ years. Not many solutions offer that.

[mattysmith80]

In all honesty we never have had a problem with Meraki and it always worked well. The major problem for us was the initial £30k for the ongoing licence cost... but we also had the majority of the 230 access points being MR16s. The MR16 APs are going end of support in 2021, when speaking with Meraki they advised these would at that point no longer work with the "Cloud Platform". They would also not be replaced under agreement if they failed beyond that point.

So we not only needed to consider the ongoing cost but a full hardware refresh too. When adding these two together the cost was mega for Meraki in comparison to Unifi.

 

It really did just come down to costs for us... Meraki had always been a good product it just got to the point where we couldnt afford it. It absolutely does make sense in a Multi Academy Trust if you have switching UTM and Wifi all in one management platform. But Unifi does a very similar job being able to manage switches, wifi and UTMs in the same central dashboard. But is significantly cheaper.