Get your free Meraki gear!
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I recently built a homelab for my CCNA studies and came across some free Merkai gear while searching for my hardware. If you sign up for their webinars https://meraki.cisco.com/webinars they give you a piece of their hardware for each webinar. Below is what they are giving away. Have fun.
MX64, firewall appliance with advanced security license
MS220-8P, 8x RJ45 + 2x SFP (not SFP+) PoE switch
MR18, 802.11n APEDIT: You must have a business e-mail when signing up.
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I've tried that before and they refused to send the gear. Now I know that there is no value to it. Ubiquiti gear is so much better, it's worth spending the money not to be saddled with Meraki stuff. They give it away for a reason. Two reasons, actually. One is that you would not buy it yourself because it's junk. Two because they know it is only valuable when you own lots of it and pay for their continuing accounts so they will make money anyway.
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@scottalanmiller This post was geared more towards adding tech to a homelab that you don't have extra cash for and not something I would do for enterprise.
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I've heard a couple cases of people not getting the gear, but it seems like it depends on the contact you have from Cisco after the webinars.
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@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.
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@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
Two because they know it is only valuable when you own lots of it and pay for their continuing accounts so they will make money anyway.
You do get three year licenses with it.
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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.
That said, Scott's right. I got a free Meraki WiFi AP years ago, never did get it to work and gave up on it. Plus the yearly support after the free 3 years was going to be something like $100+, NO thanks!
Again as Scott said, Ubiquiti stuff costs a fraction of Meraki, all updates are free, the controller, which can be internet based (though that requires effort/expense on your part but substantially less than the cost of Meraki - Heck @JaredBusch would probably be willing to host it for you for a small/tiny price.
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@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
I've heard a couple cases of people not getting the gear, but it seems like it depends on the contact you have from Cisco after the webinars.
It should never depend. They promise it and only sometimes deliver.
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@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller This post was geared more towards adding tech to a homelab that you don't have extra cash for and not something I would do for enterprise.
That's fine. Nothing wrong with getting free stuff, if they really send it. But my point was that it's not even worth it for free. Since it's not stuff you'd use in business you don't gain the experience that you'd hope to. It's not good equipment for learning. And equipment that is good for learning is super cheap. Home lab have roughly the same economics as any business. So important to consider.
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@lance said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
Two because they know it is only valuable when you own lots of it and pay for their continuing accounts so they will make money anyway.
You do get three year licenses with it.
And after three years you have to pay more than buying enterprise gear full price
Sure you get three "free" years. But it's extra effort on your end and the value is very low. If you need the gear you don't get enough free to satisfy the need. If you don't need it then Merakis effectively useless as you don't really learn anything from using it.
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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.
Nothing wrong with your post. But people should not think that it's a deal either. It's basically free gear that is normally worth nothing. There is a reason that it is free and people should understand why.
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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.
Don't be - Don't take Scott's words as an attack or anything more than they are. If you've been exposed to the Meraki stuff and the associated costs and also exposed to Ubiquiti and their costs, you'll see pretty quickly that there is very rarely a time that you would deploy Meraki instead of Ubiquiti.
Meraki started out as something awesome, but in my opinion, they tried to be like Apple, only the elites can have our stuff. And perhaps when they started, no one offered any competition. But along came Ubiquiti, as good or better equipment, MUCH lower prices, and no annual costs.
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@Dashrender 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.
Don't be - Don't take Scott's words as an attack or anything more than they are. If you've been exposed to the Meraki stuff and the associated costs and also exposed to Ubiquiti and their costs, you'll see pretty quickly that there is very rarely a time that you would deploy Meraki instead of Ubiquiti.
Meraki started out as something awesome, but in my opinion, they tried to be like Apple, only the elites can have our stuff. And perhaps when they started, no one offered any competition. But along came Ubiquiti, as good or better equipment, MUCH lower prices, and no annual costs.
And unlike Apple didn't keep pace. Meraki was great before Cisco bought them and Ubiquiti came on the scene. But they've basically abandoned them now. Now they are Cisco pricing and total crap. We replace them most places even when they are still under support. Not worth using sadly. So many problems.
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@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.
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@scottalanmiller said in Get your free Meraki gear!:
It should never depend. They promise it and only sometimes deliver.
That's a good point! It's good to be reminded that we should expect more out of our vendors, because it seems like more and more these day promise everything, but don't deliver.
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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.
