Catalyst vs Meraki

[Ex-Engineer1968]

Please forgive me if I sound frustrated, but why does Cisco ALWAYS make things difficult and confusing? I'm tempted to just tell my customers to buy Mist or Aruba. Trying to follow the difference between a Catalyst AP, a Meraki AP, a Catalyst AP that CAN support Meraki dashboard, and a Meraki AP that only does Meraki dashboard, and the ones that do BOTH is MADDENING!

What is the difference between a CW9166 and a Catalyst 9166? Are they the same AP? Do they get managed differently? Different options?

What is the difference between a CW9166 and a CW9166I?

What about the APs that end in "-MR"? 

Can someone intelligently, clearly, and unambiguously define ALL the different categories of Catalyst and Meraki APs, their designations and what those letters mean, their management paradigms, as well as roadmap changes? PLEASE! 

Thank you 

[rhbirkelund · Accepted solution]

CW9166 and Catalyst 9166 are the same thing. CW simply stands for Catalyst Wireless. 

CW9166 as it self is a general term that people tend to use. CW9166I is an AP with Internal omni-directional Antennas, not unlike 2802i, 3702i, etc.

A CW9166I-MR indicates a 9166I AP in Meraki Persona, i.e. one that is fully managed in the Meraki Dashboard, just like an MR33 etc.

CW9166D1 is an AP with internal directional antennas.

Note that there is a difference between omni-directional and directional antennas.

All Meraki APs that start with MR, e.g. MR33, MR36, MR46E, etc are Meraki native Access Points.

All APs with CW, e.g. CW9162, CW9164 are dual-mode APs which can be in either Catalyst persona or Meraki persona, and may be converted back and forth.

All APs with C, e.g. C9120, C9130, C9136 etc are Catalyst only APs, meaning they can not be managed byt the Meraki Dashboard, and thus requires a Wireless Controller.

[cmr]

Great comprehensive answer there @rhbirkelund 

[Ex-Engineer1968]

Thank you! This cleared a lot of things up.

So, an AP that starts with MR is native Meraki and it can ONLY be managed via Meraki cloud. I always understood that. Its easy. Its the Catalyst line that is confusing.

So, as I understand it, all APs that are NOT Meraki native are called Cisco Catalyst APs. BUT, to really understand their management paradigm and capabilities, you have to look at the actual SKU/part number. 

All native Cisco APs are called "Cisco Catalyst" APs. Now, looking deeper into the SKU as I stated above, let's take an example with the Cisco Catalyst 9166. That AP has 2 parent SKU numbers for the APs themselves of CW9166I (integrated omni-directional antennas) or CW9166D (integrated directional antennas). And, because the SKU starts with CW, it denotes that it can be managed by both an on-prem Catalyst 9800 controller or via Meraki Cloud (which I think is going to be called Cisco Catalyst Center). In the case of the former, the parent SKU of, say, CW9166I is further augmented with the "-domain/country code" to create CW9166I-x. In the case of the latter (Meraki/Cisco cloud managed), it becomes CW9166i-MR. 

On the other hand, some Cisco Catalyst APs are NOT "CW" series SKUs, but instead "C" SKUs, such as the C9136I-x, which is the SKU for the Cisco Catalyst 9136I (integrated omni-directional antennas). That AP is ONLY managed via an on-prem 9800 controller because of the "C" designation in the SKU. So, as I stated above, you MUST look at the SKUs to really understand how they can be deployed. 

So, what you wrote below should be in the first paragraph of every Cisco Catalyst AP landing page.

• All Meraki APs that start with MR, e.g. MR33, MR36, MR46E, etc. are Meraki native Access Points.
• All APs with CW, e.g. CW9162, CW9164 are dual-mode APs which can be in either Catalyst persona or Meraki persona, and may be converted back and forth.
• All APs with C, e.g. C9120, C9130, C9136 etc. are Catalyst only APs, meaning they can not be managed by the Meraki Dashboard, and thus requires a Wireless Controller.

Thank you once again! By the way, I'm afraid of what is going to happen with WiFi7 - yet MORE changes. 

[rhbirkelund]

I won't neccesarily say that it's a rule of thumb. Those working a lot with Cisco and been following the roadmap, have more or less gotten use to how it is now, and what's going on.

In principle the CW9166 is the same, whether it is in Meraki Persona or Catalyst. -E og -MR simply denotes how the AP was "born" i.e. if it's shipped in Catalyst persona or Meraki persona, respectively. But like I said, they can be converted back and forth, although I believe that Cisco or Meraki might not like you switching between each persona every week...

The journey during the last couple of years with Meraki and Catalyst persona is part of Cisco journey towards the one platform. In the future there will not be anything calles Cisco APs or Meraki APs. It'll be the same hardware platform with different personas depending on how they will be managed.

As an example, for C9300 switches that are in Meraki Persona, and thus mananged by the Meraki Dashboard, it's been working such that a container is running within IOS-XE, screaming API calls to the underlying IOS, based on 17.12.3. From IOS-XE 17.15 it'll be Native, such that the switch will be talking directly with Meraki, and not via a container.

With WiFI 7 we'll be moving even closer to the "one platform to rule them all", so we no longer have to order different APs depending on regulatory domain, persona, etc.

[GIdenJoe]

If there are difficult and confusing things out there, sure.  But in this case it is not confusing at all if you just take a little step back into the history.

Meraki had their own hardware lines since they were their own company.
MX
MS
MR

Cisco had their ISR's, ASR's, Catalyst switches, Aironet Access points and chose to rebrand every enterprise network gear into Catalyst.

Since they are moving into the system where only Catalyst hardware is used but with the ability to have Meraki management it is logic to use the Catalyst nomenclature for new hardware moving forward.

The official name for the 9166 is CW9166, not C9166, there is no C9166.  However some wireless design software have gotten this wrong.  So if you buy an AP you have choice between CW9166I-Countrycode, which is Catalyst managed version or CW9166I-MR which is Meraki managed mode of the same AP.

So no, most of us are still perfectly sane 😉

The only thing that could be a little confusing is that for AP's they used the -MR suffix which makes sense, but fo the switching they used -M instead of -MS.

So long story short:
The Cisco line-up for Wi-Fi 6E is:
CW9162I
CW9164I
CW9166I
CW9166D1 (directional internal antenna)
CW9163E (external antenna slots)

If it has a country code as suffix it is Cisco Catalyst Wireless Controller managed if it is MR suffix then it is Meraki dashboard managed.

[Ex-Engineer1968]

Thanks for the information, but I still think it's confusing because there are too many marketing terms and designations. Also... 

"Cisco had their ISR's, ASR's, Catalyst switches, Aironet Access points and chose to rebrand every enterprise network gear into Catalyst."

Not exactly correct. The Cisco ISR and ASR products were routers, not LAN switching gear. The Catalyst brand name was/is still only used to denote LAN switches (L2/L3), wireless controllers and APs. Routers were never Catalyst.

[GIdenJoe]

Err, hello..., new routers are called Catalyst 8000 and were released in 2020.  They were ISR and ASR and the new models now are named Catalyst.  I think it has been a while since you went onto the Cisco site my friend 😉
Here is one model for example:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/routers/catalyst-edge-ce8500-12x-router/model.html
And they also have 8200 and 8300 models.

Financial apologies are accepted 😉 J/K.