Jul

16

What's Wrong with Meraki? Black Box Technologies, Lock-In, & Hidden Costs.

sascha's picture

[UPDATE02] Once or twice a week I get the question, "I'm thinking about using Meraki's equipment, what do you think?" And I always start my answer much the same way. [As a disclaimer, I've known the Meraki folks since their time back at MIT -- my development teams used to collaborate actively with them.]

Meraki is a great system for quick do-it-yourself networking. The technology is elegant and the graphical user interface (mostly) intuitive. If you want a plug-and-play technology immediately deployed, it's a good solution. But that is far from the whole story.

As many of my readers know, I've been advocating for open tech for years and years -- so how does Meraki stack up? The core technologies in Meraki are open source -- but they've been smothered in a proprietary wrapper that makes Meraki little different from most "black box" solutions. Users can't easily view the code, change features (or add features, for that matter), fix bugs, or otherwise adapt the technology for their own uses. As a number of open source projects have discovered, even gaining access to information that was covered by existing open source licenses has become increasingly difficult as Meraki has become increasingly proprietary.

Most people think Meraki's back-end is free. They are wrong. In fact, Meraki plans tomay eventually charge for the use of their services. As a recent GovTech article reported, Meraki's founder stated that their solution "includes three years of its data center services in the price of the hardware." For those who forget, Meraki's hardware used to cost $49 for an indoor node, then the cost went up to $149 -- if you wanted more equipment, you had to pay a rate three times as much, and since Meraki's equipment is sole-sourced, you had to pay whatever they charged.

I fully expect that we're going to see the same problem with Meraki's back-end services. Most users (and certainly just about everyone in the general public) thinks that once you buy a wireless access point that it will continue to work indefinitely (or at least until the hardware fails). With Meraki, however, you're getting a package of hardware and software -- and you can't run a Meraki network without Meraki's proprietary back-end. So how much will the service cost at the end of your 3-year "free" period? I have no idea (though if you know, please let me know). [EDIT: As Meraki CEO, Sanjit Biswas, clarified on this blog (see comments), "the cost the hosted backend service is included for the lifetime of the device with the current line of products at $149/$199. We may decide to unbundle the pricing with future products, but it will be clear to the customer and not a hidden fee." So current hardware should remain free to use. And what happens if you've been a Meraki network over that 3-year periodand are now about to get a huge monthly charge? Probably you'll either have to pay whatever they cost or parts of your network will cease to work. I'm not sure that I would agree with Sanjit that this is not a hidden fee -- most Meraki customers are not aware of the possibility that future compatible hardware might carry additional fees.]

Hundreds of projects, organizations, and municipalities are rolling out Meraki-based networks, yet few seem to understand that they're buying a bundled service not just a piece of hardware. Over time, these initiatives will end up paying an unknown amount of money to Meraki just to keep their system running. It is, in fact, the ultimate bait-and-switch paradigm -- you think you have a one-time hardware cost, instead you get vendor lock-in, recurring charges, and path dependencies.

These and other reasons are why it remains so important to support and utilize truly open technologies. The simulacrums are getting better and better -- but inevitably you're getting a worse deal than you think.

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  1. JoeB (not verified) on Wed, 2008-07-16 16:07

    This is exactly why I was bashing Meraki last year, and talking about moving towards an Open Firmware.  We managed to do this, and get past the Meraki lockout.  Luckily, Meraki violated their EULA with their previous users, so anyone who bought Meraki before Feburary can do whatever they want on them.  It's not too difficult to hack the firmware, but the legalities can get you.

     Open-Mesh.com is an interesting alternative, but it's not as  polished as the Meraki dashboard, and doesn't offer all the features. However, the device is open.  In fact, if you find an old Meraki that was bought before January 2008, you can hook up a serial cable, try to reflash it and see that Meraki purposedly broke RedBoot to prevent this.  This technically would be a violation of the GPL, since they are distributing RedBoot.  Someone should look into that! :P

  2. Sanjit Biswas (not verified) on Thu, 2008-07-17 21:01

    Sascha,

    The $149/$199 products include hosted services for the lifetime of the device, so there are no additional hidden fees, etc. The article mentions three years because that's how long most of our larger customers plan to wait before upgrading to newer radio devices.

    Like most other commercial systems vendors, Meraki's platform is not open source for competitive reasons. We've invested millions of dollars in developing new routing protocols, backend systems, etc., which we recoup through the sale of our systems. For the majority of our customers searching for a commercial-grade solution this model works well, but for hobbyists/enthusaists, it may be a better fit to buy bare hardware and install free software on it.

    Also, if anyone is searching for GPL code shipped in Meraki products, it can be found at http://meraki.com/linux. We had to update our EULA a few months ago because several people were reflashing devices with non-Meraki software and reselling them under our brand. Some blogs suggested we locked our existing customers, but they've always been able to connect remotely to their devices via ssh, which does not require special cables, etc. Our support department can provide details if necessary.

    Sanjit

  3. sascha on Fri, 2008-07-18 10:30

    Hi Sanjit,

    Thanks for the reply and clarifications. Does this mean that dashboard services will always be provided for free by Meraki? Your answer was a bit unclear, but if that's the case, I'd like to correct my original blog posting with this information. Also, in terms of the Meraki End User License Agreement (EULA) concerns that have been raised when it was changed, I believe most folks were angered by Section 3.5:

      Restrictions on Use. Meraki Hardware may only be used with Meraki Software. Customer agrees not to (i) disassemble or attempt to reverse engineer the Meraki Hardware, (ii) remove or erase the Meraki Software from the Meraki Hardware, or otherwise try to disable or alter the Meraki Software functionality; or (iii) load any other software onto the Meraki Hardware.

    A number of people have argued that if someone wanted to add functionality (or change functionality) on a piece of hardware, this should be their right. Otherwise, Meraki is recreating the same situation as AT&T in the pre-Carterphone era -- it would seem to me that these EULA changes may run Meraki afoul of telecommunications legal precedent in this regard -- there there are telecom lawyers out there who'd like to weigh in, that would be fantastic.

    But do let me know whether dashboard support will always remain free so that I can be sure that the original posting is correct.

    Thanks,

    --Sascha


  4. Sanjit Biswas (not verified) on Fri, 2008-07-18 17:04

    Sascha,

    The cost the hosted backend service is included for the lifetime of the device with the current line of products at $149/$199. We may decide to unbundle the pricing with future products, but it will be clear to the customer and not a hidden fee, etc.

    Regarding the EULA, we're selling a system that includes hardware, software and hosted service components, so it's a problem if someone resells altered hardware to an unsuspecting customer (which has happened several times in the past). When we came up with the new agreement, we followed the examples of Blackberry, TiVo and others who are in a similar position.

    Sanjit

  5. Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 2008-07-17 22:43

    Bait and switch!!!!!! One other problem. Meraki sales reps tell cities that they can do a communal type of wifi. Each local customer in a city can put an indoor unit in their window and share their paid for cable or dsl service. Does the word internet theft mean anything? How about CALEA compliance? WOW. Ask Meraki about those and they don't even show up to the discussion. Luckiy our local city was educated just prior to signing on the dotted line.

  6. sascha on Fri, 2008-07-18 10:38

    Personally, I'm of the opinion that an end-user should be able to do whatever they'd like with the service they are paying for from their ISP in much the same way I can give a friend of mine a glass of water (or even water their lawn while they're on vacation), but your point is well taken. CALEA compliance is generally facilities-based and would fall to the ISP for compliance. That said, CALEA is predicated upon an ISP/end-user (false) dichotomy and any form of community network falls into a gray area that CALEA simply doesn't address. CALEA is a broken law with unenforceable mandates that doesn't map onto technological reality. Having met multiple times with FCC and Congressional staff to discuss its problems over a multi-year period, it's clear that there's been a systematic refusal to address these problems. I'd been working with a group of folks out of Colorado to petition the FCC to clarify where community networks of all sorts fit into CALEA requirements. While the petition is drafted, I am currently awaiting a new FCC that's a bit more understanding of technological realities before pursuing this course of action.


  7. Catherine Middleton (not verified) on Thu, 2008-07-17 23:21

    See http://www.canavents.com/its2008/abstracts/315.pdf for a case study of FON and Meraki.

  8. Not a Fan..BUT (not verified) on Fri, 2008-07-18 04:40

    OK I have some Meraki / FON devices, they both work fine.

    Meraki did have a stumble or two and had to adjust pricing a good bit.  But over all the product is sound, as for the CALEA they are working on it for the carrier class.

    The deal is understand the limits of the devices, the market in the area in which one wishes to deploy and use the right gear for the backbone.

    Say some tri-mode (4.9 / 2.4a / 2.4 b/g) mesh radios from proxim.com with the Meraki / a ponte2 hacked FON / ? devices to fill in the blanks around town.

    The 4.9 is the public safety band if the area does not have coverage there maybe HLS money for the project
    Using the pay model of Meraki keeping % 20 of the take a Munn Net should be able to "Pay for itself" in a short time.
    or
    By leasing (swapping for bandwidth) the Public side of the wireless net to some Inet / Voip / IpTV provider (s).

    One of the better features of the Meraki devices and the ponte2 hacked FON is that it can uplink to a wireless network via wireless so no "drop / truck roll needed" to deploy a filler node.

    And at $ 150.00 bucks the Meraki outdoor unit (if they put the site survey tool back in.. HINT... HINT ;~) ) is a great little unit tuff little sucker.
    I use one in a Dodge Durango and it takes a beating but never misses a beat, both the truck and the Meraki unit.

    Now if they would just get a few more higher gain omni / Flat panel / yagi antenna's certified to use for them.

    Not a "fan", just some fat N happy user who had to much coffee this a.m.

     

  9. Wicked Pissah (not verified) on Fri, 2008-07-18 14:24

    Sanjit "Doogie Howser" Biswas: You guys at RTM's lab at MIT did a lot of work under the guise of being open source (Click, etc) and then took it private and have continued to lock it down. With your price increase and hardware/software lock, you've really decided that you are now Apple, and because you're shiney and with great press, you can reap the rewards of fame. The truth is, your protocols and your implementation of them lacks technical sophsitication. RoofNet/Meraki does not scale and sucks for any usage other than looking at web pages - VoIP is done much better by other protocols and software which is open. I used to run roofnet but after the frustration of code-rot since your defection to the left coast, I started looking around at what others were doing and found much better solutions.

  10. sascha on Fri, 2008-07-18 16:03

    Please keep it civil on my blog. I'm happy to have disagreement and spirited debate, but don't want things to devolve into a flame war. Thanks for your understanding.


  11. Wicked Pissah (not verified) on Sat, 2008-07-19 10:40

    I didn't mean to seem uncivil, Sascha. "Doogie Howser" was Sanjit's nickname in high school. Sometimes I lack the ability to be socially nice in the face of adversity, and I apologize for that. I guess i shoud just stick to the facts then. I know that, in the past, Meraki was basically just roofnet, which was a project that several people at MIT had worked on as graduate students. It is licensed under the MIT softwarelicense so Meraki is within their legal rights to take it and modify it, closing the source if they desire. What I'd like to know, and perhaps someone can answer this for me, is what improvements to the performance of roofnet has Meraki made? I know that the RoofNet and Meraki used to be completely interoperable. This means that they were using the same protocols, unless there is some fallback mechanism for compatibility of which I am unaware. My criticisms of meraki as a company notwithstanding, there are some criticisms which I want to make of the RoofNet protocol. It uses the ETX metric to measure the quality of paths. There's nothing wrong with ETX, but it's rather simple and doesn't measure the finer qualities of a link. It's a good start, but it's been how many years since this was devised? It then uses Dijkstra’s algorithm on the database of ETX measurements to find a path. I might add that Roofnet is a Reactive routing protocol rather than a Proactive one. There are benefits and drawbacks to each type and the jury is still out on which is better and under what circumstances. Reactive protocols are simpler, don't flood the airwaves with routing updates, but there is no chance for the clever adaptations in routing anouncement methods, such as the ones which have been made in OLSR. But my real complaint against RoofNet is that each packet is source routed. This is fine for preventing routing loops, but it's really a cheap solution to the problem, which has detrimental side effects. Source-routing adds a large overhead onto the header of each packet. This isn't so bad when large packets are being transmitted, but is deadly when a large number of smaller packets is called for, i.e. protocols other than TCP. VoIP and video are problems. Additionally, the larger a packet, the more likely it is the become corrupted. This is not surprising in the case of weak links, but it can happen pretty easily on strong, short distance links as well, because of congestion in Wifi and 2.4 Ghz in general. In addition to these protocol problems, there is the implementation: RoofNet was built on the Click Router base, which can best be described as a router descrption language. Click is a very powerful tool, but it's really ore for development of protocols than it is for applications which demand high perforance on devices with limited CPU power, ram, and flash...such as the low-end, cheapest device possible (the Accton device, also used by others such as FON and mesh-router). Perhaps Meraki has spent the years inbetween their time at MIT and now rewriting the code in an efficient, low-level language such as C, and perhaps even made it a kernel module for further performance increases. I don't know, because I sold off my Meraki's for $100 each when the price jumped from the $50 I had paid for them.

    I think you're right, in that there's real problems in going to a closed-source solution, when you are subject to the whims of the corporation selling the units. But the purpose of my message is to point out that there's a lot more wrong with Meraki than being just closed-source.

     

  12. Tate (not verified) on Sat, 2008-07-19 06:32

    I used to love Meraki, before they went and turned "evil" on us. The EULA changes and the steps they've taken to prevent custom firmware from running on their gear made me stop doing business with them though. At $49, the Mini was reasonable. At $149, it's a complete joke. The Open-Mesh Accton MR3201 can be had for only $39 (in quantities of 20), and in my humble opinion, features a FAR superior build quality than the Meraki. I agree that the ROBIN software that comes pre-installed on the Accton isn't as elegant or full featured as the Meraki Dashboard, but it gets the job done. 

    Goodbye, Meraki. 

  13. Billy (not verified) on Sun, 2008-07-20 07:57

    Hopefully in the future more people will work together to build and roll out scalable open wireless networks regardless of the hardware language such as Meraki/Open-Mesh/FON etc. Are quite a few of us devoting our time to helping the needy with this technology (rolling out a mesh in a low socioeconomic area for example) or are we spending it arguing the technical merits and finer points?I'm hoping it's not the latter....   ;-)

  14. Wicked Pissah (not verified) on Sun, 2008-07-20 09:01

    Billy, the truth of the matter is that technical issues affect social ones, and always have. Study the history of technology (as I have) or read books such as Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" to get an idea of how much social impact a small technological change can make. If you can find it, the 1970's BBC docuementary series "Connections" is a fascinating introduction to this topic.

    As far as helping the needy: there are many points of view as to how one goes about this, and which needy to help first. Depending on one's particular targeted user, the structure of the mesh, it's components and protocols vary quite a bit (for example, there's little reason to be concerned about VoIP traffic in countries where VoIP is illegal).

     

     

     

  15. David (not verified) on Mon, 2008-07-21 01:37

    If you look at the investors, it makes more sense that they have a closed service, like FON. It fits in nicely with Google's quest to control the services, and more importantly, monitor user behavior,  at the edge. The mistake I believe Meraki is making is that they turned a potential sales force (system integrators, enthusiasts) into some of their biggest critics. Sure, perhaps Meraki isn't targeting these markets anymore (now focusiing on muni or commercial), but this group of ethusiasts are often asked to advise on muni, community, rural, low-income housing and commercial deployments.

  16. Henry Macky (not verified) on Wed, 2008-08-13 12:04

    Word of Warning, we have installed nine Meraki units in our business, they worked fine for a couple of months, now however we are having problems, their  support is horrible, no response to questions on their self service site. I have called them three days in a row with no call back. So be aware if you have problems they will not provide support.

  17. jayseeargh (not verified) on Sun, 2008-09-28 01:50

    Concerns about OpenSource/lock outs/Black Box solutions and ditching Meraki are all very understandable but there is another side to the argument which looks at the issue from the end users point of view.  One of our Meraki Pro networks currently has 129 active units and delivers low cost/no cost access to disabled people, low income households, elderly people, students, charities, community groups etc. you name it. As a result we have also set up training and support for isolated and vulnerable people of all ages including people who cannot use the internet because they are illiterate.  All this has happened because in 18 months we have been able to deploy a reliable, easily maintained, cost-effective system even though we are all disabled ourselves.  The system is Meraki Pro.  We tried 3 different wifi systems before Meraki and all had issues that made them unviable.  We have found Meraki support to be responsive and helpful.  We want to get things done today and recognise that to do that some compromises may have to be made, Meraki is not a perfect solution, i there one, but we have found that it is a solution that works and delivers good things. see http://www.lwbnet.org.uk Lewes Community Internet and http://www.communityinternet.org.uk

  18. Josh E. (not verified) on Sat, 2008-08-16 01:19

    Hi,

    Great post everyone!   I am a new business owner of a company in Salt Lake City called Trulywireless.  I got tired of working for dudes that just did not care about people or employees so I decided to work for myself.  I have always been a fan of the internet since I found AOL in the early 90's.  When the internet became fast, I was impressed and hooked.  When it became wireless I was in awe. 

    I found that there are a lot of companies and residential areas needing cheap internet.  I came to the conclusion that the best way to deploy internet to the masses was Wireless.  I got into Canopy, I do not find it cost effective.  I discovered Meraki about 3 months ago.  I still have not decided to pull the trigger on purchasing with Meraki.  I like idea that they are with google and obviously google found the product good enough to invest in.  I hear a lot of good things about Meraki so it is good to see other opinions. 

    I provide internet service to Apartments, Mobile parks & Residential homes.  The best way to do this so far has been Engenius AP's.  I find that the 2.4 freq has a lot of issues with interference in apartment settings, many users who see full bars have very slow connection even though the bandwith is available.   I have read some info and it states to change the Feq to B only, and don't have it mixed with G, I am going to try this option. 

     You guys are very smart, do any of you know if this will resolve the issue?  I decided to look into MESH because WiFi seems to have a lot of dead areas and when it comes to 2.4 ghz with other wireless routers in the same area it seems to have major issues.  In apartments we have areas with over 20 comcast 2.4 wireless Ap's.  I was told with Meraki we can settle any issues by placing more units in the area and that it was very simple to hook them up.  Meraki informed me that the more I placed would solve the issue.  I am skeptical because I think this would cloud the area up even more. 

    If anyone else who has installed Meraki knows would you please contact me.  This is my first major start up company and have already invested thousands & thousands of dollars to get into the industry.    I don't have a lot of money and infact came from a poor background.  I don't want to fail, I have failed many many times in my life and don't intend doing so again.  I spend countless hours researching but can't seem to find the right solution.  Any help or replies to my post is greatly appriciated and I will send all my good thoughts and karma your way.

     I am now very hesitant to buy Meraki because of your post.  I need a good solution, I don't mind doing all the work and I can buy remote gateways and do the programming it is not a big deal.  I like Meraki because I am sure it will have a great resell value even if they start charging for the software.  Meraki seems very valuable as far as saving time installing.  Further it seems very easy to use and reliable.  (everythign I am looking for).  Cost is not so great, for the amount of area I need to cover.  I am not sure how many of these bad boys I am going to need to service an entire apartment complex ect.   With the engenius Ap's I used 8 PoE ap's to cover 115 units.  It actually covers about 80 units with all the 2.4 interference going on. 

     I don't want to keep rambling but anytime I can get some feedback to learn from guys like you I will sure try to get it.   Do any of you know what type of equipment I should be using??   Is mesh really the way to go?

    Cheers!

    Josh E.

  19. herlihyboy (not verified) on Wed, 2008-08-20 21:14

    I'm looking for suggestions on hardware to purchase to route a signal from my neighbor's house to mine (~1500'). I used two, hi-gain antennas with 'altered' Linksys routers and got good pings between us, so I know I have clear LOS. All I need now is a better, all-weather, PoE-enabled pair of routers. Meraki's price is appealing, but I'd rather find a rugged piece of commercial hardware on which I can install a piece of OSS to configure the devices. I have checked into StarOS, and their product looks good, but has a proprietary OS on it. Also, open-mesh is appealing, but I'm not impressed with their 'outdoor kit' they pitch on their site (just looks like a plastic box), so I don't think it's much better than my hacked routers. Other suggestions on vendors I should investigate? I'm hoping to stay < $150 per radio.

    Thanks,

    Ryan

  20. Diarmuid King (not verified) on Fri, 2008-08-22 16:47

    try the nanostation 2 or nanostation 5 from ubiquity networks - they are about 80 USD and are outdoor units with POE - look to be superior to meraki and have less hassle reflashing

  21. Steve Song (not verified) on Mon, 2008-09-29 02:53

    Hi Sascha,

    Only just came across this post.  Great discussion!  Here in South Africa where we are developing a low-cost (http://villagetelco.org) village telco aimed at delivering local voice services via meshed WiFi,  we considered the Meraki device but discarded it almost immediately for reasons you and others have very articulately outlined above.  In fact, what we really needed was something like the OpenMesh mini-router but with a built-in RJ11 jack to plug in a POTS phone.

    To make a long story short, we have decided to build one.  It's called the Mesh Potato.  Initial development is being undertaken by David Rowe of OpenTelephonyProject fame and Elektra, author of the B.A.T.M.A.N. protocol.  You can see David's latest post on (http://www.rowetel.com/blog/?p=70) progress so far.  We hope to have prototypes by Christmas.

     

  22. sascha on Mon, 2008-09-29 07:20

    The Mesh Potato sounds like a great initiative. Please keep me posted as development continues. A prototype by Christmas is an ambitious goal -- but certainly doable with the talent you've amassed. Also, we should touch base about the Open Source Wireless Coalition and collaboration on these endeavors since there are at least two other projects working on a modular, open source, mesh-in-a-box R&D effort. Ideally, I'd like to see everything interoperable for maximum impact. Drop me a line so we can chat.


  23. spanishmesh (not verified) on Thu, 2009-02-05 06:21

    A new spanish provider of wifi mesh networks is located at www.nodalis.es

  24. Gen X (not verified) on Sun, 2009-05-24 07:07

    Hie Sascha, I understand all your issues with Meraki but here in Zimbabwe we have struggled with WiMax, Linksys, Comcast and it seems Meraki might be the way to go in Africa. Africa is generally not technologically advanced as the first world (stating the obvious) and the simpler the solution the better. In Zimbabwe wired connections have been the most popular but they are fast losing appeal and we need something fast. Meraki seems to have the commercial appeal and the user friendly approach that would do for Africa. I am not a wizkid and cannot configure and flash routers I wouuld rather have a bundled service. What do you think????

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