Meraki x Unifi …from the dark ages…
Posted by Darian_Lee_Foxx@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 35 comments
Got sent to a remote site..
According to site notes the facility had hardware installed in the last year, 4 months post install while in house IT Team was sacked..
I was brought onboard last month to begin Triage, and here is what these nimrods did.
Crossed 4-5 year old Meraki Switches and WAPs with 7 year old Unifi EdgeSwitches for POE…
The “Gateway” was a Comcast Modem, fed into a NETGEAR NIGHTHAWK and then back fed into this Switch stack.
Absolute cartoon levels of malarkey occurring. Now to rebuild.
hasthisusernamegone@reddit
Without knowing exactly why decisions were made I'd hold fire on them. That setup smells to me like "We have absolutely no budget but have been told it has to work".
Moontoya@reddit
After a moment of "oh sweet sacred Murphy"
You're likely absolutely on the (lack of) money
xertian@reddit
20+ years industry and the story never changes. It's great when you've worked somewhere for a decade and moved beyond positions, only to be a in a meeting with your predecessors, only to hear them drag your 8 year old functional implementations for not using X or Y solution when X or Y didn't exist until 2 years ago.
ReptilianLaserbeam@reddit
That smells like “my nephew knows his ways around computers, why pay for a consultant let him do our local network” kind of thing
Darian_Lee_Foxx@reddit (OP)
I’m confident that’s what it was, and after so long of dealing with complaint after complaint the leadership was finally forced to face the truth and hire somebody competent.
DapperDone@reddit
Oof that’s bad. I hope you have the budget to replace everything.
Darian_Lee_Foxx@reddit (OP)
They act like they have bottomless Pockets. Probably going to shift more out of the Unifi Nighthawk stuff and just standardize them with Cisco
localgov_it@reddit
No offense but do you have any idea what the network needs?
If it’s been running as you stated, then you’re more of a clown than the last guy for suggesting they jump to Cisco.
Darian_Lee_Foxx@reddit (OP)
I never said it was a functional network, the office staff was constantly screaming about the speeds of their “WiFi” being slow.
Pages not loading…
Primary (only WAN) constantly failing.
wutanglan90@reddit
And you think changing your switches and APs to a different vendor is going to magically fix everything? Sorry, but that just smells of not understanding networking.
Why don't you do something about their only WAN circuit instead? Then do some actual troubleshooting and configuration on the existing switches and APs to improve the LAN performance.
The only thing that needs changing as a given is the nighthawk.
Darian_Lee_Foxx@reddit (OP)
Yes, the nighthawk is the limiting factor. The best part is the more I tear into this the more it becomes nuttier.
AforAnonymous@reddit
WiFi sucking is probably the Merakis being stupid about the management VLANing (how Meraki handles that is some of the stupidest shit on the planet, honestly.) and/or STP and STP-related features. Very easy to misconfigure that with Meraki. Make sure to change the priorities too accordingly. +Go configure all the ports properly in that regard—easy enough with the bulk update features Meraki has.
wutanglan90@reddit
Agreed, OP is giving off major clown vibes.
Beefcrustycurtains@reddit
Depending on how big of an environment, unifi switches are really stable and remote management is awesome for a fraction of the price of Cisco stuff. We typically have are smaller customers use Cisco merakis and unifi switches and APs.
Born2Burn4@reddit
Were they trying to build the network from hell?
Darian_Lee_Foxx@reddit (OP)
What I was gathering while on site was, it was spearheaded by a “Gamer Dude” who used LTT as a knowledge base and guide for what to use.
How homie ended up on Meraki, I’ll never know.
VivienM7@reddit
Gamer dude who has no appreciation for business IT and the conservatism required can be the most dangerous. Certainly anyone who would pick, say, a gamer laptop over a Lenovo/HP/Dell business laptop or who would even consider uber-consumery networking equipment should not be making decisions for a business. Not saying you need to go full Cisco, but there are plenty of vendors who sell stuff far more serious than a Netgear Nighthawk at far less of a price than Cisco.
Rawme9@reddit
Even just a full stack of Ubiquiti or Omada setup would have been fine for a small business instead of..... this lol.
Entegy@reddit
....
I'm an LTT fan for the entertainment value first and neat tech hardware second.
But I would never, ever run a business bigger than 10 people based on what I learn from there.
Darian_Lee_Foxx@reddit (OP)
They focused more on custom built workstations for each one of the office employees and then out in the Cultivation area they went with these crazy RGB setups so everyone walking by would see the flashy flash machines, this is what leads me to the fact they learned everything from LTT, the pretty cables RGB cables.
Entegy@reddit
Sheesh. Here's my "get off my lawn" opinion, but I just want my hardware in a plain black box. I don't need the fancy lights inside my computer, I want them around the room.
Good luck fixing that network.
Darian_Lee_Foxx@reddit (OP)
The whole thing is a problem. One day at a time.
Born2Burn4@reddit
My guess would be eBay. Used UniFi in the last not awful equipment works well for a decent price. New Job is Meraki/Cisco all the way, which in my opinion is about of money but it’s what they want to use. Using the Netgear as you “firewall” is pretty frightening.
p47guitars@reddit
Edgeswitches are not unifi. It's a whole separate beast.
It's from their UISP line in modern times. No adoption shenanigans, just plug and play managed switches that are pretty well documented. It's likely all passive POE so it really limits it's applications, not like it was anything amazing to begin with...
Specialist_Cow6468@reddit
EdgeSwitch is not UniFi, UniFi is EdgeSwitch under the hood. It was, at least
Unable-Entrance3110@reddit
I am sure that Netgear is part of some bot farm at this point...
Snowdeo720@reddit
Well now you know part of why they were sacked.
ADynes@reddit
I love ubiquiti for cheap poe access switches for users and IP phones. I'll fight anyone on the price to value for them. But running a netgear nighthawk as the primary router is bonkers.
(I wouldn't trust ubiquiti for the router either just to be clear).
brokerceej@reddit
Aruba ION are more capable POE switches for cheaper than Unifi and free cloud management too.
lebean@reddit
Really like the Instant-On gear, but since HP is required to fully sell off that division as part of the Juniper merger, I do kind of wonder what will become of Instant-On. Hopefully it just keeps on going as great as it had been so far.
brokerceej@reddit
I met with my Aruba rep last week and brought the same thing up. She assured me that even though they are being forced to spin it off that not much will actually change. It has to operate as a separate company but somehow HPE will still be pulling the strings and involved.
I guess we will see, but I share your concerns.
Darian_Lee_Foxx@reddit (OP)
That Fortress Gateway is the only Enterprise level HA Compliant Gateway Unifi offers, so yeah, they’re not being Gateway.
ExceptionEX@reddit
I mean I see this all the time in companies under a 100 people. It ain't great, but hardly the worse I've seen.
Running to companies with adren 100 MB switches, that had never been touch since they were installed in the early 2000s.
They kept upgrading their internet connection but complaining about the speed then blaming the ISP because their speed test from their desktop was shit.
Darian_Lee_Foxx@reddit (OP)
Yeah. They have 450 people on this site alone.
sryan2k1@reddit
Meraki switches are great if you fit in their use case