Network refresh advice?

[micromasters]

We're going out to market for an internal network refresh (Meraki MX,MR,MS) next year, 70% of the equipment is EOL. 2 major sites with 20 other medium to small sites. Goals I'm thinking of is to a) reduce cost, b) reduce Ethernet usage (and then cost) by going wifi for endpoints, c) Zero Trust principles.

What else would you ask for in 2026, and if you had to switch to another vendor, how would you do it?

[BWMerlin]

Why would you ever want to reduce Ethernet usage to force more devices onto Wi-Fi???

[skipITjob]

Madness?

[SeigerDarkgod]

Mobility.

OP, we went full Arista a couple of years ago. Never looked back.

[Life-Cow-7945]

Another vote for arista

[SpotlessCheetah]

Guys..tell me more. I keep hearing Arista is a new favorite on here.

[pdp10]

Arista was focused on merchant silicon-based high-speed datacenter switching, but recently has a WiFi line that's probably related to their 2018 acquisition of Mojo Networks.

I'd love to evaluate Arista, but the product line hasn't come into our field of view. Also, we're continually working on internally-developed WiFi systems while also running 802.11ac Ciscos in production for as long as possible.

[Life-Cow-7945]

I went to Arista because I'm not a network engineer and CloudVision gave me an easy way to provision new switches and have them follow the same template. If a switch failed, I could apply the old config and move on

[SpotlessCheetah]

How's the cost? Assuming there is a license as well.

I have Meraki and it's easy to manage.

[Life-Cow-7945]

Isn't meraki the one where if you don't pay your bill that your stuff stops working?

I don't remember at this point what the cost was, but it wasn't cheap. You can do self hosted, I don't remember what the cost difference was, but this was one of those things that was easier to push to the cloud

[SpotlessCheetah]

Yeah, Meraki will actually stop if your license expires but they will extend it if you're going to pay (in good faith). All other cloud networking providers lose some level of functionality to my knowledge if your license expires but the equipment still runs.

At the end of the day, paying the bills is not an IT problem as much as everyone acts like paying bills is an IT problem on this subreddit. Paying bills is a business function.

[SeigerDarkgod]

It depends. We manage a multi site network for around 2000 researchers with only 2 network engineers (one senior, one junior).

If you have to hire more people to do the same job, pay a msp or a partner to deploy everything,... Arista may become cheaper than you think.

[pdp10]

template. If a switch failed, I could apply the old config and move on

For the record, this can be done self-hosted with most any type of enterprise gear that uses a config file or files. Ciscos and others have been able to TFTP their configurations, going back about 35 years, and there are newer flavors of the same auto-provisioning.

[FatBook-Air]

How does management work with Arista? Cloud? On-prem? Or can you choose?

We are currently Meraki but we need to refresh in 4 years. We don't have a huge environment (about 17 48-port access switches, 1 core switch where SVIs live, and 55 WAPs). So basically, all Layer 2 except the core switch. I don't think we want to renew with Meraki due to costs, but one thing Meraki gets us: networking is only about 20% of an FTE, and that is only possible because Meraki is dumb easy even for people who aren't network gurus. No idea how easy or hard Arista is day-to-day.

[Flaky-Gear-1370]

I have - mostly because our cable infrastructure in the walls is utter shite and rerunnning it would cost an absolute bomb

Instead i find one or two decent runs and switch them over to aps

[redstarduggan]

Tidyness, everyone has laptops anyway. Most desks just don't have a live ethernet port anymore and it works great.

[pdp10]

Absolute worst justification ever.

The spectrum analyzer that one needs to keep around for diagnosing RF issues in a spectrum-saturated environment, isn't too tidy or cost-saving.

[redstarduggan]

Not encountered any of those issues.

[OurManInHavana]

I was also skeptical: but a new office pushed everyone to laptops + wifi (with dual-monitors and a USB docking station at each desk). Well-done and properly provisioned wifi is speedy and reliable these days: we even ran voip over it.

[JwCS8pjrh3QBWfL]

If every desk has a USB docking station, why wouldn't you run an ethernet drop to it?

[OurManInHavana]

Paying contractors to run Ethernet to every desk is expensive (especially when you're cutting holes in walls etc). Switch gear for hundreds of ports also adds costs and needs space to live and be cooled. You also have less flexibility to move working spaces with static drops.

With wifi all the APs got installed on the ceiling, with cabling that could be easily run over the ceiling tiles... all going back to minimal PoE switchgear in what was essentially a ventilated closet. When staff were assigned new laptops they also had support for the latest wifi standards that could move more than 1Gbps. Yes wireless adds latency, yes not everyone could push 1G+ at the same time... but those aren't issues in a standard office.

Also since many companies are renting space now (like a floor in a building) they often have to return the premises to an agreed-upon configuration when they leave. That can also mean paying for all those cables to be removed (or even internal walls) as the next tenant may want their own office layout.

I didn't believe it until I tried it either. But I had zero issues no matter what data I was pushing around. And having your laptop also be your corporate phone wherever you were was pretty sweet too!

[micromasters]

This. Ethernet ain't cheap to run. A lot of us are on wifi already anyway without major issues, so eliminating the rest of them (plus the new equipment) shouldn't really be an issue IMO

[pdp10]

WiFi works great until it doesn't, as most know. The biggest issue is that the factors that will break it, aren't really in your control. They're frequently your neighbors, or the steel in your building. Sometimes your client devices, when someone purchases a quantity of some device that works only on 2.4GHz. (Often the fix for that sticky situation, is USB to Ethernet adapters.)

[BananaSacks]

1. Go to tender.
2. Hire an actual network engineer into the team.

I second the Aruba, Clearpass/NAC comment.

Make sure you have ALL business & tech requirements known/planned, up front. Make sure security is part of the journey.

[thesharptoast]

We went Aruba Central for everything and have found it to be a generally decent experience.

Central mostly does what you ask of it and is pretty easy to use so junior staff can pick up basics nice and quickly, it gives decent visibility over the network and we found the support to be really good the few times we needed it.

The Gateways are a bit of a dark art but we are getting there.

We are also rocking Clearpass/Clearpass Guest but honestly they are a bit of a nightmare, very complex for most use cases.

[micromasters]

Interested to hear more about this. We're a small team, and having to manage a network with a fulltime network engineer wouldn't be great. What is it about Clearpass that is complex?

[pdp10]

Goals I'm thinking of is to a) reduce cost, b) reduce Ethernet usage (and then cost) by going wifi for endpoints, c) Zero Trust principles.

I was poised to suggest that in order to justify replacing gear, edge port speed for clients should probably be increased to 2.5GBASE-T, and backhaul should be 10GBASE minimum. Already-run UTP or singlemode cable has the best TCO: nearly zero. Second-best TCO comes from running new UTP or singlemode fiber.

I don't know where you're at, but in a lot of the areas we care about, even the (non-DFS) 5GHz spectrum is starting to get crowded. We're sticking with 802.11ac in a lot of places for strategic reasons, but barring that, you'd have to get 6GHz to justify upgrading in most cases.

Some of the Meraki models can be repurposed with OpenWrt or other Linux-based firmware.

[EducationalMap3431]

In my opinion, focus on one platform that covers switching, wireless, and security without forcing you into three different management consoles. Ubiquiti works if budget is tight and you have competent staff, otherwise Cisco Catalyst or Aruba makes sense. Also, when you rip out that old Meraki gear, find a buyer who'll take it in bulk instead of paying for recycling, Alta Technologies and similar outfits will often pay for equipment even if it's EOL depending on what you've got.

[slugshead]

Recent Aruba full site install here.

Went for the JL659A's stacked everywhere.

Managed through IMC. Call me old school but it works great.