Trial period for new Meraki User

[antonical]

Hi we bought a  bunch of Meraki MR33-HW AP's and I wondered if there was some kind of trial period to see if these are what we are looking for when setting up a community wifi project. The specs look good and we wanted to install 'enterprise grade' AP's and of course we got them very very cheap. I may have an inkling as to why!

But it looks like to make any use of them even for testing we have to spend a lot of money on licenses that seem to be per AP and many many times the cost of the hardware! And are non refundable if we decide that these devices are not for us.

I saw that cisco gave away many of these devices to webinar participants with free licenses for 3 years. 

Is there some kind of initial test or trial or evaluation period for these devices?

Cheers

Tony

[SoCalRacer]

Typically the license is relatively cheap compared to the hardware, but that is all subjective to what you or your org considers expensive.

If you add the devices to inventory and claim them you should have a 30 day grace period, provided they have been removed from any other org.

[antonical]

HI thank you for the fast response. We got these as used items essentially donated for the cost of the shipping. They were all ex corporate devices and 'unclaimed' whatever that means. I am not sure what organisation they historically belonged to. 

I assure you at 80-100GBP per annum per device that is a lot of money to us and could amount to over a 1000gbp per year just in licensing costs. There did not seem to be a NFP option or a group or pool license or a trial or evaluation license. 

Cheers

Tony

[SoCalRacer]

So that sounds like you should be able to add them to inventory and utilized the 30 day grace period to test them. In the end if the costs for the licenses is too much for your org then you should look at donating them.

[DarrenOC]

Hi @antonical , reach out to your Meraki Account Manager as they’ll happily arrange Trial eqpt. Or, take a look at the useful link below:

https://documentation.meraki.com/Getting_Started/Meraki_Free_Trials

[BrandonS]

You can get a free trial for any gear easily.  Just contact your favorite Cisco reseller big or small.  2 week trials are SOP and can even be extended.  They will also pay return shipping if you choose to return.

EDIT: I noticed you already have the used gear.  @SoCalRacer is right and that is probably your best bet at this point.  They would work on a new organization for 30 days with grace period.  Have you even tried to claim them into your inventory yet?  A big problem with used gear is you may find they are already claimed and therefor useless to you.

[antonical]

Hi thank you for your prompt responses. Yes we managed to get 1 device connected by claiming it.

It now shows up under our Organisation - Wireless - Access Points. IT appears to be working and allows clients to connect and browse the internet.

We are now trying to figure out how it is doing that on our network. It appears to have got a valid set of IP creds from our DHCP server. But we can browse our lan as a connected client! Which is a bit scary!

I am sure there is much learning to ensure the connected clients cannot get out onto the lan. I would have thought this was the default operation. Where AP clients can get to the internet but not each other or the underlying lan.

Must have missed something when config this one. 

There is a red license issue flag at the top that says we need a dashboard license so will investigate that. I have emailed the sales team as suggested to see what we need to do to trial this setup.

We will need to install a good few of these around the building to test the functionality etc. But the dashboard looks very comprehensive. Is all our data secure? Who has access to it? Is it being mined by Meraki/Cisco et al?

Thank you all for the attention and support.

A quick question for the experienced. We cannot seem to find a way to lock down the local web Ui on the AP itself. It seems to respond to a client web page on 10.128.128.128 and proves a lot of information to a potential attacker. How do we disable this web ui or restrict access only to admins etc. 

Cheers

Tony

[antonical]

Re: Trial period for new Meraki User

Hi thank you for your prompt responses. Yes we managed to get 1 device connected by claiming it.

It now shows up under our Organisation - Wireless - Access Points. IT appears to be working and allows clients to connect and browse the internet.

We are now trying to figure out how it is doing that on our network. It appears to have got a valid set of IP creds from our DHCP server. But we can browse our lan as a connected client! Which is a bit scary!

I am sure there is much learning to ensure the connected clients cannot get out onto the lan. I would have thought this was the default operation. Where AP clients can get to the internet but not each other or the underlying lan.

Must have missed something when config this one. 

There is a red license issue flag at the top that says we need a dashboard license so will investigate that. I have emailed the sales team as suggested to see what we need to do to trial this setup.

We will need to install a good few of these around the building to test the functionality etc. But the dashboard looks very comprehensive. Is all our data secure? Who has access to it? Is it being mined by Meraki/Cisco et al?

Thank you all for the attention and support.

A quick question for the experienced. We cannot seem to find a way to lock down the local web Ui on the AP itself. It seems to respond to a client web page on 10.128.128.128 and proves a lot of information to a potential attacker. How do we disable this web ui or restrict access only to admins etc. 

Cheers

Tony

[antonical]

Hi thank you for your prompt responses. Yes we managed to get 1 device connected by claiming it.

It now shows up under our Organisation - Wireless - Access Points. IT appears to be working and allows clients to connect and browse the internet.

We are now trying to figure out how it is doing that on our network. It appears to have got a valid set of IP creds from our DHCP server. But we can browse our lan as a connected client! Which is a bit scary!

I am sure there is much learning to ensure the connected clients cannot get out onto the lan. I would have thought this was the default operation. Where AP clients can get to the internet but not each other or the underlying lan.

Must have missed something when config this one. 

There is a red license issue flag at the top that says we need a dashboard license so will investigate that. I have emailed the sales team as suggested to see what we need to do to trial this setup.

We will need to install a good few of these around the building to test the functionality etc. But the dashboard looks very comprehensive. Is all our data secure? Who has access to it? Is it being mined by Meraki/Cisco et al?

Thank you all for the attention and support.

A quick question for the experienced. We cannot seem to find a way to lock down the local web Ui on the AP itself. It seems to respond to a client web page on 10.128.128.128 and proves a lot of information to a potential attacker. How do we disable this web ui or restrict access only to admins etc. 

Cheers

Tony

[cmr · Accepted solution]

For now change the SSID to be NAT mode: Use Meraki DHCP instead of Bridge mode: Make clients part of the LAN, this will isolate them from the LAN but not the internet.

If you want to use multiple then revert to bridge mode once you have a separate VLAN on your network switch(es) and separate the traffic there.

[SoCalRacer]

I believe this should help disable local status page

https://documentation.meraki.com/zGeneral_Administration/Tools_and_Troubleshooting/Using_the_Cisco_M...