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]

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 

[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.