Meraki Wireless – Wireless Mesh Networking « Busch Blog

Meraki Wireless – Wireless Mesh Networking « Busch Blog

Meraki Wireless – Wireless Mesh Networking
Posted on May 14, 2010 by sleepysmurf
Just set up a new wireless hot spot for a new restaurant going in at the Peachtree plaza. (The Old Kelseys). All my corporate networks run on Meraki Technology. http://www.meraki.com to check it out.
These units are simply amazing and pretty easy to configure. Meraki offers the best / affordable solution for wireless mesh networking. I have these deployed at Super 8 Motel, Peachtree Inn, a Church, a number of restaurants, and Hochelaga Inn.
The Meraki dashboard allows easy configuration of pretty much everything. The best part is the integrated splash page configuration utility. It is very simple to set up a log-on splash page so that the user must login before they can use the network. We can also display the company logo and change the colour scheme of the splash page to match the users needs. Why are we using a splash page to authenticate and not WPA? Easy answer is not all WiFi cards / Operating Systems support WPA. Meraki allows us to have an OPEN network secured via a logon page instead of WPA. We do this because most clients can authenticate with an open access point regardless of hardware vendor or software vendor they may be running.
One other benefit these units have over the standard dlink/linksys system is that the units will Email me as soon as they have a problem. If one of the access points goes down in the mesh I am notified immediately about the problem and in some cases can resolve the issue before the guests even notice. I can also set upload and download bandwidth caps on a per user basis. I also have the ability to do page redirects, meaning as soon as the user authenticates they are re-directed to the hotel/restaurant website. Its quite a great system really.
Anyway, check them out at meraki.com for some more info if your interested in deploying larger SME/SMB Wireless Mesh networks.


kw: mesh, networking, freedom, p2p, internet, bitcoin, asterisk, google, google voice, android, root, free, wireless, data, linux, voip, voice