Recommendation for WiFi and current issues with Meru

[loxford01]

We currently have a Meru controller MC4200 and Meru APs across our school. Unfortunately the controller has failed today and we don't have a support contract with Fortinet to currently resolve this. I believe its the CF Flash card gone faulty but cannot find instructions to remediate this, nor is there a backup for this card. This means no Wi-Fi at all for students as the 70 plus Meru APs are sitting ducks without the controller. Fortinet support refuse to support and are asking that we contact a reseller for support. This was previously setup by a managed service provider who also no longer support the school as we now have a dedicated IT team. I would welcome recommendations on Wi-Fi upgrades, ones that do not require a primary controller that all APs rely upon. A cloud solution would be ideal but I would like to know what you are using, in the event of downtime what you have in place as a contingency to keep Wi-Fi connectivity ongoing and who you would recommended as there are so many choices like Mesh, Meraki, Ubiquti etc. I have established communication with a reseller who are willing to support but have just about got the ball rolling with a support contract which will take a few days to setup before we can get an engineer down.

[DalekSec]

Unifi - Cheap but lacks a lot of features, SSID limit etc., can be run on a cloud key (not recommended though for large schools)

 

Ruckus - Slightly more expensive but does anything you want it to do, need a powerful-ish controller

 

I've not used any other Wi-FI solutions but i'd stick with Ruckus if i could. (new place is fully unifi and no scope to change)

[FragglePete]

I'd like to recommend Cambium Networks as an alternative. We installed 97 access points over the Summer and the system has been flawless. Cloud controlled with no on-going license and support is UK Based. Marginally more expensive than UniFi and cheaper than all the others I looked at.

 

Redway Networks did the supply and initial configuration for us.

 

Pete

[Net-Ctrl]

Hi - whilst we don't work with Forti-WiFi/MERU we do work with FortiGates. As such, I have just called up a couple of contacts to first confirm if the above is true, and there is no RMA, or return procedure, and second, to see if we could get you some free support under the circumstances. It seems Fortinet require a support contract to enable an RMA and even engineers outside Fortinet would most likely need to defer to Fortinet for support which they'd reject without a valid contract in place.

 

I'm sorry - I know this doesn't add too much but thought it was at least worth letting you know that what you have been told seems to be the case. I hope you can get a speedy turn around on the support contract.

[ITGuyNW]

I'd like to recommend Cambium Networks as an alternative. We installed 97 access points over the Summer and the system has been flawless. Cloud controlled with no on-going license and support is UK Based. Marginally more expensive than UniFi and cheaper than all the others I looked at.

 

Redway Networks did the supply and initial configuration for us.

 

Pete

 

Same as us and yeah completely flawless. Had them in 18 months now. Works a charm.

[mavhc]

Installed Cambium, no problems with the hardware/software so far, all cloud controlled but you can run a local server, and you can upgrade your free cloud account to get more features. No need for ongoing payments

[localzuk]

Just had 145x Aruba 515s installed here, working well so far! Cloud control panel has its foibles though.

 

Previously were happy Ruckus users.

[loxford01]

Thanks for your input and suggestions. I guess in the meantime a support contract wont be as expensive as a whole school upgrade which is around £40k. I have checked Fortinet forums and this is the best I can find but download links for firmware 8.4 don't work, let alone I don't even know if this is what I need as I don't know how it was setup in the first place. I will keep trying.

 

https://community.fortinet.com/t5/Cybersecurity-Forum/MC4200-Corupt-Compact-Flash-card/m-p/256585

[Primus]

Thanks for your input and suggestions. I guess in the meantime a support contract wont be as expensive as a whole school upgrade which is around £40k. I have checked Fortinet forums and this is the best I can find but download links for firmware 8.4 don't work, let alone I don't even know if this is what I need as I don't know how it was setup in the first place. I will keep trying.

 

https://community.fortinet.com/t5/Cybersecurity-Forum/MC4200-Corupt-Compact-Flash-card/m-p/256585

 

Just FYI to put in 70 Unifi U6 Pro APs would be less than £9k rather than £40k.

 

We run Unifi APs and switches extensively across our MAT, we've had no issues but the warranty isn't very good so have some cold spares (that you can definitely afford because of how much you saved!)

[CrootUK]

Nearly 300 Meraki APs here and still migrating from unifi as per life cycles. Both brands get the job done, Meraki being much more feature/support/warranty rich though.

 

We went with Meraki route as we also went that route for switching so its nice to have near a full stack of there tech, makes visibility of your environment much clearer, also let a-lot of our techs get involved with supporting infrastructure too.

Edited November 20, 2023 by CrootUK

[PotNoodleTech]

If you need to install something quick without having to force yourself through endless sales drones/ discussions / paywalls license shenanigans then Unifi is your only option really.

 

Buy controller buy Aps. install controller install APs. Done.

 

Hopefully ,eru won't charge you if you try and get back in support as I've seen that done before "oh sorry sir your APs have been out of spec for the last 3 years were going to have to charge an extra fee to get you back in warranty".

[loxford01]

Is there a particular model of Unifi AP/controller to consider? Having this nightmare with the current Meru controller and realising none of the AP's can function without it, I really want to implement a solution that wont break the entire Wi-Fi infrastructure if a controller goes down again in future or unless I also get the relevant support contract with it.

[PotNoodleTech]

To be honest my Unifi has been decommissioned now so I am out of date, but I ran the controller software on a windows VM as that then inherits the high availability of the VM infrastructure. You can get small controller keys but these are not redundant or high availability. You may be able to get more modern cloud key appliances?

[Primus]

Go for the Unifi U6-Pro

 

They don't need a controller in the traditional sense, you can run the Unifi Network Server in a Linux or Windows VM on your existing servers. Depending on what configuration you choose to run the APs can function completely without the UNS being on - however if you wanted to use the captive portal for guest access for example then the UNS needs to be on.

[loxford01]

We got it working again, CF card was faulty, flashed with a new CF card using older firmware downloaded from Fortinet. Followed this guide Meru MC4200 Guide on an old Windows 7 PC with console connection via Putty to the controller. Once we got through the configuration setup stage we were able to access the GUI and it picked up all Meru APs, up and running. I'm surprised Fortinet could not give us these steps and instead asking to get a support contract worth over £1K. Now just got to keep it running until we upgrade our entire WiFi.

[geohanson]

Sorry I've only just seen this - We had the same issue with ours and the biggest issue was actually getting hold of the Firmware.

You can use the SATA port and connect an SSD rather than rely on a CF card. That's what I did with our MC3200 anyway...

[KK20]

unifi is cheap. With cheap comes the same level of fault finding you would expect from cheap, especially when you have to upgrade firmware (its a roulette if it works properly again). The 24v POE are a little weak, make sure you have spares. Unifi used to be monsters for pulling lines with short notice. We run unifi but I wouldnt if I had more money, i'd run ruckus. We run ours on a gen1 cloudkey, yes I know how to rebuild the database when it barfs following a power outage. Yes they run a mongodb without journalling. I think you are only supposed to use about 30 devices on a cloudkey gen1, we run around 50 without issue but we dont use unifi guest network so that will explain it. If you plan on using unifi guest network and want to use a letsencrypt SSL then you will be in a world of hurt as unifi are still stuck in the 90s regarding updating SSL certs - there is NO gui for updating (let along an automated letsencrypt support) so you will need to script this. At least you can SSH to the cloudkey. Edited November 30, 2023 by KK20

[Davit2005]

Is there a particular model of Unifi AP/controller to consider? Having this nightmare with the current Meru controller and realising none of the AP's can function without it, I really want to implement a solution that wont break the entire Wi-Fi infrastructure if a controller goes down again in future or unless I also get the relevant support contract with it.

 

Unless you run a captive portal on the Unifi controller I don't think it matters if it is not available (at least that used to be the case), it is not like other wifi solutions where the APs become paper weights without the controller/s.

[Mr.Ben]

Unless you run a captive portal on the Unifi controller I don't think it matters if it is not available (at least that used to be the case), it is not like other wifi solutions where the APs become paper weights without the controller/s.

I can second this. We are running a centralised controller for 40 sites. When I need to update it, it's only the guest login pages that fail to load, everything else keeps working as you would expect. No single AP or switch depends upon the controller to function*.

 

* They all depend on a controller to receive a configuration, you can't do it from the command line.

[cheekycharly]

How much roughly does Unifi cloud controller cost? Looking to manage all three sites from the single login.

 

So no onsite hardware keys.

 

Currently have Plasma Cloud which is central and cloud based but AP's are old now.

[Aprice]

Have a look at HostiFi.

 

Alternatively we run our own instance in Digital Ocean, If you've got the skillset to manage a linux box and want it offsite.

[tfines]

I was just handed an MC4200 to config. The link in your post no longer works. Any chance you could point me to a copy of it? Hard to find info on this thing! Thanks!

[MisterTechMan]

We have soley used TPLINK Omada for our WiFi and have just refereshed 20 of them with the latest models. Defintiely worth having a look into.

[tfines]

Hi, thanks! But the Google Drive link requires a login. Could you reshare it with 'anyone with the link' read access?

 

[jmenic]

Have a chat with the lads over at WM Networks as I know they maintain some Meru / Fortinet kit and can also point you in direction of other solutions such as Cambium. My contact there is Colin Howse - [email protected]