Future of using Meraki gear

[Donald Gordon]

Hi

Have people seen this slashdot story? "From 'Happy Hacking' to 'Screw
You'" :
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/24/1318226

Looks like Meraki may be something to transition away from. Currently
it's possible to downgrade the devices and then replace the firmware
<http://robin.forumup.it/viewtopic.php?t=99&start=15&mforum=robin> but I
imagine that technique will stop working at some point, too.

I've just bought a set of Meraki Minis as a bulk order for a bunch of
people from the computer club at VUW, all of whom were intending on
reflashing them, so it'll be interesting to see how easy that is for us
to do :-)

donald

[Mike P]

IMHO, This technology is changing so fast, I'd expect any network to have a life of 3 years or less.  That's what I'm planning on, anyway. 

The long-term value of TheFreeNet is the contact details of the people in the community who care, not the hardware.  :)

~mike

[Rimu Atkinson]

Whoa, and i was this close to buying one too! That's not the sort of
company i want to do business with.

Oooo what do we have here?? http://www.open-mesh.com/ open source, $50
each node....

Rimu

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http://rimu.geek.nz/

[olivernz]

Hi

OK, you've now convinced me. So when's the flasher workshop? Since
this is all about meshing and not what with I think we can go o-
Source.

I'm also quite disappointed with Meraki as I can get no details on my
node(s) without being an admin. I'm also concerned that securing your
net with a Meraki-only approach is too difficult.

Cheers
Oliver

[Donald Gordon]

Hi

Having just investigated this myself...

If you want 20 units, buying a case of the things from open-mesh should
be cheaper per unit including shipping than the per unit price for 12
Meraki Minis. All you need to do is find 19 other people who want the
things, too :-)

The only major difference between the Meraki and open-mesh accton
hardware is that the Merakis do (nonstandard) power over ethernet, which
the acctons don't do at all. But if you're handy with a soldering iron
and a crimping tool doing your own PoE isn't too difficult :-)

(Note that in PoE terms, "nonstandard" isn't actually all that bad.
Proper PoE is relatively complex, whereas most nonstandard approaches
just put a DC voltage across spare pairs in your ethernet cable, which
is stupidly easy to wire up yourself)

donald

[Mike Brown]

It seems to me that what we want to do - provide free wifi to, say,
CBD of Wellington - is only ever going to work with extremely simple
plug and play devices. Meraki seems the closest to this.

Whilst I'd love a hackable open-source model, we can't expect people
to flash something, or use a soldering iron and crimping tool to
convert something. It's just not scalable. We certainly don't have the
resources, nor would we want to get into that level of maintenence,
and no one else is going to do it for us.

Or am I wrong on this?

Mike

[Rimu Atkinson]

Yeah it needs to be extremely simple. The devices from open mesh make claims about 'plug and play', so I expect they are one of the alternatives that are on par with meraki.

Power over Ethernet isn't a make-or-break feature for me.

R

[olivernz]

@Rimu:
And they seem to be cheaper than Meraki!

@Mike B:
I went for the same argument but I'm getting fed-up with Meraki. I'd
be prepared to flash units at no cost for people once I know how to.
And I also think I'm not alone when it comes to supporting Meraki
users.

I say let's flashem all!

Cheers
Oliver

> >> > Oooo what do we have here??http://www.open-mesh.com/open source, $50

> >> > each node....
>
> >> > Rimu
>
> >> > Donald Gordon wrote:
>
> >> >> Hi
>
> >> >> Have people seen this slashdot story? "From 'Happy Hacking' to 'Screw
> >> >> You'" :
> >> >>http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/24/1318226
>
> >> >> Looks like Meraki may be something to transition away from. Currently
> >> >> it's possible to downgrade the devices and then replace the firmware
> >> >> <http://robin.forumup.it/viewtopic.php?t=99&start=15&mforum=robin> but I
> >> >> imagine that technique will stop working at some point, too.
>
> >> >> I've just bought a set of Meraki Minis as a bulk order for a bunch of
> >> >> people from the computer club at VUW, all of whom were intending on
> >> >> reflashing them, so it'll be interesting to see how easy that is for us
> >> >> to do :-)
>
> >> >> donald
>
> --
> Phone (04) 381 4827 or 021 823 129
> Skype rimu123

> MSN rimuatkin...@msn.com
> ICQ 60417596
> Yahoo rimu_atkinsonhttp://rimu.geek.nz/

[Tomo]

Just to Throw Rural Links name into the mix again, they have bought 3
of the Open Mesh devices and are investigating flashing them and
providing POE which is essential for their use.

They will need 100's for these for their networks and combining orders
with them is a possibility. They will flash them as well.

I hope to get RL's CTO to come down to talk to the many people in
Wellington about Mesh networks. He is a professor at Waikato Computer
Science dept and a leader of the WAND Network group.
Is there a planned meeting that he can attend?

Ian

> > > Oooo what do we have here??http://www.open-mesh.com/open source, $50

[Mike P]

What about doing it at the mobile barcamp - it was meant to be this weekend, but they havent found a venue yet.
http://barcamp.org.nz/mobile

[Tomo]

Hi Mike,

Murray Pearson is fairly busy for the next 2 weeks, but he has a
University break after that. If we can time a meeting during that
break, he will be able to make it.

I have asked him to provide a quick summary of his activities with
Meraki and Open Mesh and I will post this here.

Ian

On Mar 26, 10:41 pm, "Mike P" <zoomzoom.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What about doing it at the mobile barcamp - it was meant to be this weekend,

> but they havent found a venue yet.http://barcamp.org.nz/mobile

> > > >  >> donald- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[olivernz]

@Tomo,

Maybe get him to join the group here and he can post it himself. If
he's into this stuff it might be of interest to him anyway.

[Donald Gordon]

Hi

I'm happy to show people how to do the flashing, if that's useful.  I haven't actually installed the R.OB.IN firmware on any of my merakis yet, just plain openwrt plus some meshing stuff I've been working on.  I haven't had a chance to try flashing one of the newly made-hard-to-flash units, as mine are all old (apart from the new ones I bought last week, but they came with old enough firmware that reflashing was easy).

This of course requires me to be in NZ --  I'm at CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas for the week :-)

donald