Saturday, February 16, 2008

my experiments with meraki

I had heard a lot about Meraki and how they were trying to change the way people build and use mesh networks. I called up meraki sales to find out more. surprisingly, the person on the phone wasn't very forthcoming with any answers. when I asked him whether anyone from india had bought the nodes, he said that they'd sold quite a few in the country. and then when I asked him to give me some references so I could go talk to these people and also see the meraki nodes in action, he tells me that information is confidential! the whole attitude was a take it or leave it.
however, being inquisitive, I just went ahead and placed an order for 3 outdoor nodes (standard) for $99 apiece which cost me Rs 6500 after customs and frieght.
the meraki's came in their own green boxes with a PoE injector and 2dbi antenna. assembly was quick and painless and we could register them on the dashboard.
the best part about them was the zero configuration required and auto config in gateway or repeater mode. we were able to see the merakis on google maps from the dashboard.
we took some readings and found that the range with the default antenna is dismal. it barely covers 50m in standard environment and around 75 m in open ground.
the captive portal is not configurable beyond the text and there is no user authentication at all!
we are now planning on trying them out with larger gain antennae.



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5 comments:

Unknown said...

I am from india and I have used it. I ts a cool product from a technology point of view. But the business model is flawed.

www.kenneyjacob.com

check the meraki tag.

Keep Walking Tall said...

hi,
i'm new to wireless technology.specially to wimax . i would like to know more about the technology and how is works. i have read many e book and other articles on this but have not seen any practical application. I want to know if you are in the same stream and can share some important basic on this that would be great.

GROWING UP TOGETHER

nagTHEsnakeman said...

You haven't blogged in a while ... as an occasional visitor (and non commenter) I just wanted to say I've enjoyed reading your stuff.

cheers,

Shiv said...

Thanks Nag,
I have been caught up in too many things!
you could follow me on twitter too twitter.com/shiv_jags

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