WiFi cloud vendor: We charge 2-3 times less than Cisco, Aruba

Meraki CEO touts new 802.11n boxes, cloud-based services for SMBs

Cloud-based Wi-Fi is now available for small and medium businesses, based on new gear from Meraki.

See this and other products coming out of Interop in a slideshow.

The company is best known for creating cheap, easy deployed, neighborhood Wi-Fi networks, using a mesh technology called RoofNet, originally developed at MIT. The new enterprise products are two indoor 802.11n access points, and cloud-based configuration, management and security services. In effect, Meraki makes the conventional WLAN controller a service accessible via any Web browser.

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Cloud-based Wi-Fi is now available for small and medium businesses, based on new gear from Meraki.

See this and other products coming out of Interop in a slideshow.

The company is best known for creating cheap, easy deployed, neighborhood Wi-Fi networks, using a mesh technology called RoofNet, originally developed at MIT. The new enterprise products are two indoor 802.11n access points, and cloud-based configuration, management and security services. In effect, Meraki makes the conventional WLAN controller a service accessible via any Web browser.

That means Meraki devices can be plugged in, turned on, provisioned and configured largely automatically. Enterprise network administrators can log in via a Web browser to Meraki's hosted service to modify settings, troubleshoot any problems, and perform a range of management tasks.

"I find it intriguing: you can get most of the capabilities of the traditional enterprise-class products at a fraction of the cost," says Paul DeBeasi, senior analyst for wireless and mobility at Burton Group, the Midvale, Utah technology research firm. "You can manage it yourself or someone in the Meraki channel can offer it as a managed service. I think Meraki will get some traction if it [really] works."

The new products will be demonstrated next week at Interop. Additional information is on the Meraki website. 

The new access points are slim white boxes, just over 1.5 inches thick and slightly bigger than a folded sheet of paper:

MR11: 1-radio 802.11a/b/g/n access point, radio can be set to either 2.4 or 5 GHz bands, maximum data rate of 300Mbps using 2 radio streams (a "2x2" MIMO configuration), 802.3af PoE, integrated omni-directional antennas, 10/1000 Base-T Ethernet, support for the full panoply of enterprise security protocols and standards, including WPA2, TKIP and AES, 802.1x and VLAN tagging; 802.11e QoS. Price: about $600

MR14: identical in all respects except it has two radios, which can run at the same time on either band, for a total data rate of 600Mbps. Price: about $800.

The Meraki Enterprise Cloud Controller service is available for either $150 per access point for a 1-year license, or $300 per access point for the term of a 3-year license, including support.

For cost-conscious smaller enterprises lacking extensive IT expertise, the combination can offer dramatic savings. The lower costs are due to lower access point prices compared to Cisco, Aruba and other enterprise WLAN vendors, no stand-alone controllers, and no separate charges for maintenance and support. Meraki CEO and co-founder Sanjit Biswas says Meraki's total price tag can be 2-3 times less than Cisco and Aruba for a 30-access point deployment.

The price points are "astonishingly low," writes Craig Mathias, in his "Nearpoints" blog  for Network World. "One might, of course, question putting a key element of one's WLAN on the other side of the Internet, but the [Meraki] Enterprise Cloud Controller is really more of the management plane than the control plane, and no user data flows through this service regardless."