Get your free Meraki gear!
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@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@Dashrender said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
I don't see a need to delete the post, or even the followup posts - if you're happy with a product, definitely feel free to talk about it.
I guess I was taken aback at first because of all of the other positive things I've read from people using them. I kind of reacted out of haste.
People who like them tend to not be the people paying the bills. I've not spoken to anyone that will touch them... that has also used something else. If you read reviews or query people who like them, they always like them while ignoring the financial damage to the company and/or didn't compare them to something comparable like Unifi. That's a problem with reviews, and especially IT reviews, they are often out of context and what is listed as a positive five star review is actually an "avoid this product" review if you dig into it.
We've never seen Meraki and UBNT head to head that the answer wasn't to just rip out the Meraki and throw them out. If competitors like UBNT didn't exist and Cisco had kept up, Meraki would be decent. But given the real world market pressure of nearly free, vastly better UBNT gear, Meraki is pretty bad.
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Also important to note that Meraki WAS great. They were pioneers, they were worth the money. I've recommended them a lot myself. But not any longer. Cisco bought them and threw them under the bus. Now they are some of the worst gear that Cisco has, and that says a lot. Cisco makes some seriously bad entry level gear. Meraki took over Linksys' place in the Cisco ecosystem
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@scottalanmiller Gotcha. Do you or @Dashrender know of any way to get Ubiquiti gear for cheap? Is there any reason not to buy used or older Ubiquiti gear?
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@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@Dashrender said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
I don't see a need to delete the post, or even the followup posts - if you're happy with a product, definitely feel free to talk about it.
I guess I was taken aback at first because of all of the other positive things I've read from people using them. I kind of reacted out of haste.
Very easy to do, learning to filter the kool-aid is a big part of what we do around here. You might want to take a look at if-you-don-t-question-me-you-don-t-respect-me, as @scottalanmiller can seem abrasive if you're not familiar with the man.
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@travisdh1 Thanks! Great post that you linked to.
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I did this about four years ago, right about this time of year, right after I'd started at NTG. I used it briefly but ended up not using it. Now I just use their free portal to track devices, etc
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@thanksajdotcom said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
I did this about four years ago, right about this time of year, right after I'd started at NTG. I used it briefly but ended up not using it. Now I just use their free portal to track devices, etc
Specifically for my phone in case of theft, etc
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@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller Gotcha. Do you or @Dashrender know of any way to get Ubiquiti gear for cheap? Is there any reason not to buy used or older Ubiquiti gear?
Well, it's kind of all cheap. For home (lab) use you don't need much or big gear. Their starter firewall unit is about $55 and you own it, no support costs. That's pretty cheap. Finding used cheaper might be available, but hard. And that includes a tiny switch and PoE in that price! Their APs start around $65.
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@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller Gotcha. Do you or @Dashrender know of any way to get Ubiquiti gear for cheap? Is there any reason not to buy used or older Ubiquiti gear?
I just picked up an ER-X and UAP-AC-PRO for $200 at MicroCenter last week. I need to put up a board to mount the AP on still, so I probably won't have them running till next weekend. The ER-X is a 5 port enterprise class router for $50. The UAP-AC-PRO is their high-end wireless access point. If you go with a UAP-AC-LITE, you can get a brand new, enterprise class router and AP for $150. This setup is actually for my house
I went with the UAP-AC-LITE access points at work with an ER-X to handle routing. Great setup. The signal on the access points was actually to good, even in different buildings the signal strength still needed turned down.
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@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller Gotcha. Do you or @Dashrender know of any way to get Ubiquiti gear for cheap? Is there any reason not to buy used or older Ubiquiti gear?
Well, it's kind of all cheap. For home (lab) use you don't need much or big gear. Their starter firewall unit is about $55 and you own it, no support costs. That's pretty cheap. Finding used cheaper might be available, but hard. And that includes a tiny switch and PoE in that price! Their APs start around $65.
Which unit is that? The ER-X doesn't come with a power injector. It does use the same unit that comes with their APs, and does pass through so you can use an injector you got with one of their APs to power both.
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@travisdh1 said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller Gotcha. Do you or @Dashrender know of any way to get Ubiquiti gear for cheap? Is there any reason not to buy used or older Ubiquiti gear?
Well, it's kind of all cheap. For home (lab) use you don't need much or big gear. Their starter firewall unit is about $55 and you own it, no support costs. That's pretty cheap. Finding used cheaper might be available, but hard. And that includes a tiny switch and PoE in that price! Their APs start around $65.
Which unit is that? The ER-X doesn't come with a power injector. It does use the same unit that comes with their APs, and does pass through so you can use an injector you got with one of their APs to power both.
That should work, I think.
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@travisdh1 said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller Gotcha. Do you or @Dashrender know of any way to get Ubiquiti gear for cheap? Is there any reason not to buy used or older Ubiquiti gear?
Well, it's kind of all cheap. For home (lab) use you don't need much or big gear. Their starter firewall unit is about $55 and you own it, no support costs. That's pretty cheap. Finding used cheaper might be available, but hard. And that includes a tiny switch and PoE in that price! Their APs start around $65.
Which unit is that? The ER-X doesn't come with a power injector. It does use the same unit that comes with their APs, and does pass through so you can use an injector you got with one of their APs to power both.
The ER-X will give POE on the last port on the right, when looking at the ports, when just using the wall wart - try it.. I did and it worked.
POE, not Passive 24v, so it only works for Ubiquiti Pro APs. -
@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@travisdh1 said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller Gotcha. Do you or @Dashrender know of any way to get Ubiquiti gear for cheap? Is there any reason not to buy used or older Ubiquiti gear?
Well, it's kind of all cheap. For home (lab) use you don't need much or big gear. Their starter firewall unit is about $55 and you own it, no support costs. That's pretty cheap. Finding used cheaper might be available, but hard. And that includes a tiny switch and PoE in that price! Their APs start around $65.
Which unit is that? The ER-X doesn't come with a power injector. It does use the same unit that comes with their APs, and does pass through so you can use an injector you got with one of their APs to power both.
That should work, I think.
@scottalanmiller That's actually how the ER-X and one of the AP we have is running right now. Convenient that.
@Dashrender said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@travisdh1 said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller Gotcha. Do you or @Dashrender know of any way to get Ubiquiti gear for cheap? Is there any reason not to buy used or older Ubiquiti gear?
Well, it's kind of all cheap. For home (lab) use you don't need much or big gear. Their starter firewall unit is about $55 and you own it, no support costs. That's pretty cheap. Finding used cheaper might be available, but hard. And that includes a tiny switch and PoE in that price! Their APs start around $65.
Which unit is that? The ER-X doesn't come with a power injector. It does use the same unit that comes with their APs, and does pass through so you can use an injector you got with one of their APs to power both.
The ER-X will give POE on the last port on the right, when looking at the ports, when just using the wall wart - try it.. I did and it worked.
POE, not Passive 24v, so it only works for Ubiquiti Pro APs.Ah, nice @Dashrender.
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@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
Ubiquiti gear is so much better, it's worth spending the money not to be saddled with Meraki stuff
Wow. Sorry for trying to give people access to free gear.
Attended the webinar, spoke to Cisco rep afterwards, did not want to send the gear. Number of Meraki installs I've done = 0. Number of Ubiquity installs = Lots.
Cisco lost out on a lot of sales over that 1 botched webinar.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
Ubiquiti gear is so much better, it's worth spending the money not to be saddled with Meraki stuff
Wow. Sorry for trying to give people access to free gear.
Attended the webinar, spoke to Cisco rep afterwards, did not want to send the gear. Number of Meraki installs I've done = 0. Number of Ubiquity installs = Lots.
Cisco lost out on a lot of sales over that 1 botched webinar.
Yeah, to some degree the whole thing is a scam. If they want you as a customer, they send the gear without the webinar. If they think you are just going to use it at home or aren't going to be a big advocate for them, they don't send the promised gear even after you've "paid" for it by spending time in their marketing talk. They aren't honest and that alone is a reason to never use them - you can't trust them and as a security vendor, that's kind of important. You don't want con artists with control of your firewall and networking gear!
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@scottalanmiller @Breffni-Potter woudn't you guys fall under one of the categories "partner, reseller, or consultant" - these are specifically mentined as not being eligable to recieve free eqpt.
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@larsen161 said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller @Breffni-Potter woudn't you guys fall under one of the categories "partner, reseller, or consultant" - these are specifically mentined as not being eligable to recieve free eqpt.
Everyone in IT falls under that category. And everyone falls outside of it, too. Everyone I know that's ever gotten the free stuff falls under that category, too. And back when I did it, they were not mentioned as an exception until afterwards when they decided not to send them. Maybe they added it later when we started pointing it out regularly. They marketed the free stuff directly to consultants (which includes ANYONE working in IT) so clearly were not intended it to be so limited.
That's the handy thing about their wording, consultant can mean anyone in an IT role, even internal. Internal IT still consults to management.
And if they count "where you work" as a limiting factor, that implies that you can't use the freebie stuff at home, because it's qualifying your business class, not your personal one. I'm not personally any of those things. So would not be affected by them.
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@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@Breffni-Potter said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
Ubiquiti gear is so much better, it's worth spending the money not to be saddled with Meraki stuff
Wow. Sorry for trying to give people access to free gear.
Attended the webinar, spoke to Cisco rep afterwards, did not want to send the gear. Number of Meraki installs I've done = 0. Number of Ubiquity installs = Lots.
Cisco lost out on a lot of sales over that 1 botched webinar.
Yeah, to some degree the whole thing is a scam. If they want you as a customer, they send the gear without the webinar. If they think you are just going to use it at home or aren't going to be a big advocate for them, they don't send the promised gear even after you've "paid" for it by spending time in their marketing talk. They aren't honest and that alone is a reason to never use them - you can't trust them and as a security vendor, that's kind of important. You don't want con artists with control of your firewall and networking gear!
The more I search through reddit.com/r/homelab the more asshatery I find about not getting the gear. I'm going to challenge the Cisco rep that has been e-mailing me to just send me the gear without the webinar knowing it won't happen and in the meanwhile pickup some Ubiquiti stuff.
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@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@Breffni-Potter said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
Ubiquiti gear is so much better, it's worth spending the money not to be saddled with Meraki stuff
Wow. Sorry for trying to give people access to free gear.
Attended the webinar, spoke to Cisco rep afterwards, did not want to send the gear. Number of Meraki installs I've done = 0. Number of Ubiquity installs = Lots.
Cisco lost out on a lot of sales over that 1 botched webinar.
Yeah, to some degree the whole thing is a scam. If they want you as a customer, they send the gear without the webinar. If they think you are just going to use it at home or aren't going to be a big advocate for them, they don't send the promised gear even after you've "paid" for it by spending time in their marketing talk. They aren't honest and that alone is a reason to never use them - you can't trust them and as a security vendor, that's kind of important. You don't want con artists with control of your firewall and networking gear!
The more I search through reddit.com/r/homelab the more asshatery I find about not getting the gear. I'm going to challenge the Cisco rep that has been e-mailing me to just send me the gear without the webinar knowing it won't happen and in the meanwhile pickup some Ubiquiti stuff.
I'm kinda glad that I'm not the only one, lol. It was years ago that I tried it, long before UBNT was available or that I had heard of it. Back when I really wanted to get hands on with their gear. Now I've used it a lot over the years and... not so impressed. Now I know why they didn't want technical people to use it, it's only "cool" to non-technical managers that can be easily led around by the sales guys.
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Yeah I did one before looking at the Ubiquiti stuff and never got the free AP.... But I think that was my fault to saying there was little chance of me deploying the Cisco stuff due to costs lol
