Has anyone ever messed around with a “Cisco Meraki MR 18” or “Meraki MR 12”? Some have recently came into our office (brought back from field for disposal) and I was wondering if there is a way to re-use it. The service for them has ended and I’m not able to get access to the device. I’ve tried doing the 30/30/30 reset but the same SSID and network settings are on the devices.
Am I able to re purpose these?
Thanks to their proprietary system and licensing requirements, you can't just reset them and use them as standalone AP's. Even if you own the damn hardware and just want to manage your AP's locally.
But there is hope:
https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/meraki/mr18
It involves some hardware hacking (tapping into the serial console).
I've used Meraki Equipment for various things but I've never tried to re-use any that already been assigned to a network and such.
I believe there is a procedure for 'releasing' the devices but it requires having access to the Organisation their currently tied to. You would also need to potentially purchase a Yearly license for them which varies between Meraki Resellers in cost.
Cisco Meraki do also have a FAQ on this sort of thing: https://documentation.meraki.com/zGeneral_Administration/Inventory_and_Devices/Cisco_Meraki_Devices_purchased_Second_Hand
Meraki is such a PITA.
I could see their business working if the hardware was cheaper.
Buying hardware at Slightly cheaper but having to pay yearly to use it just seems crazy to me.
The greatest thing is when it expires people will know because the network just stops working.
Picture an office without internet access and the IT guy, or executive on the phone because they did not pay the bill. It's easy for company's to forget about paying something they paid once 3 years ago.
I can only picture in the coming years when people forget to renew the 3 year contract. That their business will not be doing so hot.
But back to the original topic. Without a release from the owner though meraki and you having an active service contract with meraki. They are Bricks.
That AP hardware hack posted is kind of cool, and worth a shoot since they are really junk when not active.
The hardware radios are not bad just limited to N.
I really hope the whole Meraki business models fails horribly. Companies are trying extremely hard to not let business' own their devices.
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Cisco is trying to push a "classic" enterprise licensing model onto a product that is targeted at medium and small businesses. The hardware isn't even cheap enough to justify the ridiculous licensing expense.
I wonder how many businesses are going to replace Meraki with something else as soon as the 3y license expires. Dumping a huge amount of money in three year old hardware just doesn't make sense, especially when you can buy brand new (and better) gear for a similar amount.
It would've made a little more sense if the licensing fee had some kind of hardware upgrade program attached to it, that would've made it at least somewhat interesting.
Maybe I'm just too spoiled by what Ubiquity has to offer at a certain price point, but I fail to see why anyone would invest in a full Meraki system.
I had looked into it when I was replacing our MSM400 access points at my old job. Good grief the meraki stuff got expensive really quick. The TCO for buying mid-range Cisco Branded AP's was almost half of the Meraki stuff.
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