I’ve just recently completed an enterprise wide wireless upgrade to Meraki AP’s. I have to say it brought joy to my heart to get rid of all those old (very old!!) Cisco AP’s. Wow…they were such boat anchors! Now we have a state of the art, cloud managed, wireless infrastructure that will support my company for many years to come. And management is SO much easier now…all from a single pane of glass. To be honest, I’m not a huge preacher for “cloud” management solutions…but for a wireless network, Meraki’s cloud management interface is incredible!!
To get you started, you should check this out: Meraki Wireless Basics and Best Practices
Lots of great articles and best practices for wireless networks
Make sure to click on all three tabs…Guides, Articles and Most Popular. Lots of great information, and a fair of amount of it pertains to generic wireless networks, not just Meraki.
Enjoy!
Not sure if you want to go into detail, but would like to hear about your specific experience differences in what you had to what you have now.
No problem Shane…I work for a large construction company, so things move slow in terms of obtaining new technology. When I started here back in 2002, there was no wireless at all. So over the years, there was a need for an AP at this office or that warehouse…stuff like that. I bought the early Cisco 1200 series AP’s, and rolled them out…one at a time. As the company grew and the needs changed, more AP’s were needed. So, more Cisco AP’s…and I was used to touching each AP when changes were needed. Finally, there was a need for a bunch of AP’s at all of our District offices…this was shortly after Cisco purchased Airespace, but my reps were still preaching “autonomous”. Ugh…such drivel. So I bought and installed a bunch of stand-alone AP’s. Now…everything worked great, but managing all of this was a royal pain. And about 9 months afterwards, Cisco changed their tune and started preaching all about wireless controllers. Thanks Cisco!
Several years ago, we needed to upgrade some of the older wireless sites, and I knew I wanted something different. I tried out a couple of different cloud based solutions, and really liked Meraki. We upgraded those sites, and it was wonderful. (Of course, and I’m not kidding, about 3 months later, Cisco bought Meraki!! But I will admit that Cisco seems to have left Meraki alone…I still enjoy dealing with Meraki.) Then late last year (2015), I got permission to do a complete upgrade of all remaining sites. That project is done, and I’ve received a lot of great feedback from my users…the wireless is faster and more stable. And as for me, managing all of that is SO MUCH easier now…all with a single pane of glass through Meraki’s cloud system.
That sounds pretty cool! Well done!!!!!
Very cool. Thanks for sharing that.