Tag Archives: meraki

Replacing Meraki with TP-Link Omada for the new year

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[This post was originally teased on Medium – check it out and follow me there too.]

I’m a big fan of Meraki, but now that I haven’t been an employee of Cisco for over two years, I no longer have the free license renewals or the employee purchase discounts on new products and licenses. So October 28, 2022, was the end of my Meraki era. (Technically a month later, but I needed a plan by October 28 just in case.)

The home network, mostly decabled, that got me through the last 4-5 years.

I needed a replacement solution that wouldn’t set me back over a thousand dollars a year, and my original plan was to use a Sophos SG310 either with the Sophos home firewall version or PFsense or the like. I even got the dual 10gig module for it, so that I could support larger internal networks and work with higher speed connectivity when the WAN links go above 1Gbps. I racked it up with a gigabit PoE switch with 10gig links, and now a patch panel and power switching module.

The not-really-interim network plan. The Pyle power strip and iwillink keystone patch panel stayed in the “final” network rack.

But I didn’t make the time to figure it out and build an equivalent solution in time.

How do you solve a problem like Omada?

Sometime in early to mid 2022 I discovered that TP-Link had a cloud-manageable solution called Omada.

It’s similar in nature to Meraki’s cloud management, but far less polished. But on the flip side, licensing 12 Omada devices would cost less than $120/year, vs about $1500/year (or $3k for 3 years) with Meraki. So I figured I’d give it a try.

The core element of the Omada ecosystem is the router. Currently they have two models, the ER605 at about $60-70, and the ER7206 at about $150. I went with the ER605, one version 1 without USB failover (for home, where I have two wireline ISPs), and one version 2 model with USB failover (for my shop where I have one wireline ISP and plan to set up cellular failover).

You’ll note I said cloud-manageable above. That’s a distinction for Omada compared to Meraki, in that you can manage the Omada devices individually per unit (router, switch, access point), or through a controller model.

The controller has three deployment models:

  • On-site hardware (OC200 at $100, for up to 100 devices, or OC300 at $160, for up to 500 devices)
  • On-site or virtualized software controller, free, self-managed
  • Cloud-based controller, $9.95 per device per year (30 day free trial for up to 10 devices I believe)

I installed the software controller on a VM on my Synology array, but decided to go web-based so I could manage it from anywhere without managing access into my home network.

Working out the VPN kinks

The complication to my network is that I have VPN connectivity between home and the shop across town. I also had a VPN into a lab network in the garage. Meraki did this seamlessly with what you could call a cloud witness or gateway – didn’t have to open any holes or even put my CPE into bridge mode. With Omada, I did have to tweak things, and it didn’t go well at first.

I was in bridge mode on Comcast CPE on both ends of the VPN, and did the “manual” setup of the VPN, but never established a connection. I tried a lot of things myself, even asked on the Omada subreddit (to no direct avail).

I came up with Plan B including the purchase of a Meraki MX65. I was ready drop $300-500 to license the MX65 at home, MX64 at the shop, and the MR56 access point at home to keep things going, with other brands of switches to replace the 4-5 Meraki switches I had in use.

As a hail-mary effort, I posted on one of the Omada subreddits. The indirect help I got from Reddit had me re-read other documentation on TP-Link’s site, wherein I found the trick to the VPN connectivity – IKEv1, not v2. Once I made that change, the link came up, and the “VPN Status” in Insights gave me the connectivity.

The trick to the manual VPN connectivity was IKEv1, not v2

The last trick, which Meraki handled transparently when you specified exported subnets, was routing between the two. I had to go to Settings -> Transmission -> Routing and add a static route with next hop to the other side of the tunnel. Suddenly it worked, and I was able to connect back and forth.

Looking at the old infrastructure

My old Meraki network had 12 devices, including three security appliances, four switches, a cellular gateway, and four access points. The home network used the MX84 as the core, with a MS42p as core switch, a MS220-24 as the “workbench” switch on the other side of the room, and a MS220-8P downstairs feeding the television, TiVo, printers, MR42 access point, and my honey’s workstation, connected via wireless link with a DLink media access point in client mode. I also had a MS510TXPP from Netgear, primarily to provide 2.5GbE PoE for the Meraki MR56 access point.

There was a SG550XG-8F8T in my core “rack” (a 4U wall-mountable rack sitting on top of the MS42p switch) but it was not in use at the time – I didn’t have any 10GBase-T gear, and the MS42p had four 10GbE SFP+ slots for my needs.

The garage lab had a SG500XG-8F8T behind the Z1 teleworker appliance. TP-Link powerline feeds that network from the home office.

The remote shop had a MX64, MS220-8P, and MR18, as well as the MG21E with a Google Fi sim card.

So there was a lot to replace, and complicate in the process.

Looking at the new infrastructure

The new core router is the TP-Link ER605, feeding the MS510TXPP switch for mgig and 10gig distribution (including WiFi), with another downlink to a TL-SG2008P switch ($90 at time of purchase) which offers 4 PoE+ ports and integrated monitoring with Omada.

The ER605 has front-facing ports, so I have those cables going into the patch panel to connect Internet uplinks and the PoE switch. On the SG2008P, ports are on the back and LEDs are on the front, so I have all 8 ports going to the patch panel and they feed things from there.

The MS510TXPP has downlinks to the powerline network, a SG500-48X switch across the room connected by 10 Gigabit DAC, and a few other things in the office.

I have the wireless needs fulfilled by a Netgear Nighthawk router in AP mode, and a TP-Link Omada EAP650 access point that needs some tuning. I expect to replace the Nighthawk with the EAP650 at some point, and I have a Motorola Q11 mesh network kit coming soon which could replace much of the wifi in the house.

The downstairs network is still fed by the DLink wireless bridge (as a client of the Nighthawk), but now it has a random Linksys 8 port switch serving the first floor needs.

The garage lab still has the SG500XG, bridged via powerline, and very limited hardware running due to California electric prices.

In the shop, I have the ER605v2, feeding a random 8-port TP-Link unmanaged switch for now. I’m thinking about getting an Omada switch there, and I recently installed a UeeVii WiFi6 access point (acquired through Amazon Vine, review and photos here) which is more than enough to cover the 500 square feet I need there.

Why’d it take so long to post?

I had found an Etsy seller who made 3d printed rackmount accessories, and I ordered a cablemodem mount, router mount, and a 5-port keystone patch panel. I ordered December 15, shipping label was issued December 21, and I expected it right after Christmas. Alas, after a month and two shipping labels being generated, I had no gear and no useful response from the seller, so I got a refund and went with rack plan B.

I took a 14″ 1U rack shelf like this one (but fewer slots and about half the price) and used zip ties to attach the router and 8-port switch to it. Not a great fit, but inside the CRS08 carpeted rack it’s not so visible.

Where do we go from here?

Right now the networks are stable, except for no wifi in the garage and occasional wifi flakiness in the house. So my next steps will be fixing the home wifi, and probably moving another AP to the garage (possibly even setting up a wireless bridge to replace the powerline connection).

I am looking at some more switching, possibly upgrading the Omada switch to replace the Netgear at home, and then take the existing 8 port Omada to the shop to provide more manageability (and PoE+) over there.

The front runners for the new switch right now are the SX3008F (8 port SFP+ at $230; 16 port SX3016F is $500), SG3428X (24 port gigabit, 4 port SFP+), and the SG3210XHP-M2 (8 port 2.5GbE copper PoE + 2 SFP+ slots at $400, pretty much the same as the Netgear except with no 5GbE ports).

There are a couple of other options, like the $500 SSG3452X which is equivalent to the MS42p, but I’ll have to consider power budget and hardware budget, and what I can get sold from the retired stash this month to further fund the expansion.

I also need to work out client VPN to connect in to both sites. I had client VPN on my travel laptop to the shop for a couple of years, but haven’t tried it with the new platform yet.

TP-LInk supposedly has a combination router/controller/limited switch coming out this year, the ER7212 which also offers 110W PoE across eight gigabit ports. It’s apparently available in Europe for 279 Euros. Hopefully it (and other new products) will be released in the US at CES Las Vegas this week.

I was going to bemoan the lack of 10G ports, but then I saw the ER8411 VPN router with two SFP+ ports (one WAN, one WAN/LAN). Still doesn’t seem to support my 2.5Gbit cable WAN, but it’s at least listed on Amazon albeit out of stock as of this writing.

When POHO isn’t psycho enough – a home network update in progress

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If you’ve been around for a while, you will know that POHO, or Psycho Overkill Home Office, is an ongoing theme of this blog. I’ve described it more than twice as “two comma technology on a one comma budget.” It stands to reason that my home network is in the “psycho overkill” range, with three sites connected by VPNs and internal 10 gigabit networking (40 gigabit on its way).

Disclosure: Much of the gear in this post is Cisco Meraki, and much of that was obtained using employee purchase program benefits as a Cisco employee. As a system engineer I was eligible for free renewals on my licenses for the Meraki gear, but the original licenses and most of the hardware purchases were out of my own pocket. Any other gear mentioned was purchased out of my own pocket through mainstream methods (i.e. eBay) unless otherwise noted. Cisco has not reviewed, influenced, or endorsed this post or this blog, and they most likely won’t.

A photo before everything was recabled. There are a lot more ports in use now.

What’s the POHO like today?

In the past two years I’ve been running a somewhat crippled network, despite having pretty good employee purchase benefits at work. Still, with gigabit fiber and 500 megabit cable, I’m at about 2.5x the capacity of my core router.

I’m running a Meraki MX84 as the core of my home network, with AT&T / Sonic fiber as primary, and Comcast as secondary. It downlinks to an MS42p 48-port switch with four ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet. On the upstream side, it connects via Meraki’s auto-vpn to an MX64 in my shop across town, and to a Z1 Teleworker unit in my garage that keeps some lab gear protected from the world (and simplifies IP addressing).

I have a couple of MS switches around the networks, as well as a Cisco Small Business SG500XG-8F8T, a Netgear MS510TXPP (for mgig POE) and a couple of other brands in use from time to time. Wireless is handled by MR56 and MR34 in the house, MR18 in the garage, and MR16 in the shop.

Unfortunately, the MX84 is limited to 500mbps of stateful firewall or 320mbps of advanced security throughput. I’m getting pretty close to that, but the other half of the uplink is idle unless I switch over to the other side of the MX.

Continue reading →

Straying into Ubiquiti territory for a home network experiment, part 1

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As many of you know, I run my home, lab, and store networks primarily on Meraki gear. Employee discounts and internal system engineer promos make it a reasonably priced platform for me, but I can understand why non-Cisco employees might not build out a substantial home network on their own dime with Meraki.

Having cut directly over from the Linksys WRT1900AC as a router to a mix of MX security appliances, MS switches, and MR access points, I didn’t really take the time to evaluate other options. However, with many friends getting into Ubiquiti, I figured it was worth trying that platform out, especially when some of the devices went on sale at a local computer store.

In this post I’ll talk about the initial deployment and the gear I’ve purchased. I do have a few items from Ubiquiti that I won’t be using for this environment (like the EdgeRouters and a couple of relatively ancient 24v POE access points).

Spoiler: I’m still a big Meraki fan, and if I were deploying in a business environment where I didn’t want to tweak much or where I wanted enterprise-grade features, I’d still lean toward that platform. However, for a home network, home office, or early stage  startup, the Ubiquiti option is definitely worth a look.

Initial Bill of Materials

ubnt-cloudkey-aa-1.jpg

UC-CK Cloud Key, with two AA batteries for scale

Note that Amazon offers some combos with multiple elements, like this $349 combo with Cloud Key, Switch, and Security Gateway. You may be able to get quicker shipping and/or save a buck or two that way, but look around at the combos to see what makes the most sense. If you decide to buy multiples, there may be discounted packs of devices (like this 5-pack of AP-AC-PRO which saves you about $15 per device).

You’ll also find the items on Newegg, including Newegg on eBay, Central Computers (if you’re in the SF Bay Area), and direct from Ubiquiti. If you use the Amazon or eBay links above, we get a few bucks that will go back into gear to review here and on rsts11travel.

Why did I choose this particular gear?

ubnt cloudkey

UniFi Cloud Key

Like Meraki, Ubiquiti uses the concept of a “cloud controller.” Unlike Meraki, you can place the controller on your own private cloud, or purchase a “Cloud Key” to run on your own network for management. There is still a “public” website to view and manage the network, but you can access the local controller via ssh, https, or a mobile app.

Since I don’t currently have a full-time system running that would host the controller, I chose to buy the older Cloud Key. They have newer versions, with more powerful controller hardware, battery  backup, and more features, but since this is meant to be a basic deployment on a budget (and I wanted to pick up the cloud key locally), I went with the first gen device. This device is about the size of four AA  batteries; can be powered by PoE or a USB cable; and of course still requires a LAN connection even if powered by USB.

ubnt accesspoint

UniFi AC Pro

For wireless access, there are over a dozen different AP models, compared and contrasted on the Ubiquiti knowledgebase. The three devices in the “wave 1” family (UniFi AC) include the Lite, the LR (long range), and the Pro. My decision on the Pro was based primarily on “ooh, it’s on sale” but I’m pretty comfortable with the features including extended 5GHz radio rate of 1300 Mbps, and the dual Ethernet ports for redundancy.

ubnt switch

UniFi Switch 8 60W

The switch is meant to let me offload both the AP and the Cloud Key from their current home on my Meraki MS42P switch, so that I can put them behind the security gateway for more thorough testing. The AP uses 9 watts and the Cloud Key uses 5 watts, so the 60 watt PoE switch should be enough for the near term.  There is a 150 watt version (US-8-150W, for about $190) with two additional SFP modules, if you do need more power. And interestingly, the switch is the only piece in the bill of materials that has a metal shell as opposed to plastic.

ubnt security gateway

Unifi Security Gateway 3-port

Finally, with the USG security gateway, I get additional visibility into the Internet connection itself and my use thereof. Without the USG in the data path, I can see per-device information within my network, and status of the APs and switches, but I don’t have the visibility at a network level.

Starting the deployment

I bought the access point first, and went back a day or two later for the cloud key once I decided not to run the controller on my own hardware. So the CK went up first, plugged in via the tiny Ethernet cable to a port on my Meraki PoE switch.

When I logged in, of course, it was behind a few versions on the firmware. I had issues with firmware updates and “adopting” the device into my Ubiquiti cloud portal. The adoption failed claiming the device was unreachable, and the firmware upgrade didn’t seem to start, much less complete.

So I ended up doing some minor workarounds using some steps from a community post here for the firmware update. I wish I could remember the fix for the adoption, although I suspect I’ll figure it out again on a future device and can report back then.

Once the Cloud Key was recognized, updated, and working properly, I adopted the Access Point and updated it. I configured a wireless network and went downstairs from the home office to connect my iPad to the new network and test it out.

Not surprisingly, the network was as fast and efficient as it was through the MR34 at the same distance. I did learn from the Ubiquiti interface that there were at least 50 networks detected by the AP-AC-PRO, which was slightly surprising. Despite that, I’m seeing about 20% utilization on 2.4GHz and 3% utilization on 5GHz and noticeable but not overwhelming “interference” registering primarily on 2.4GHz.

I also realized that the extra MR34 downstairs, connected through an MS220-8P switch that was uplinked through Powerline networking, was definitely throttling my connectivity when I associated with it. Unplugging the AP forced my iPad to connect to the upstairs MR34, and I didn’t have any issues even at the distance. So for now, the Powerline network is driving two tiny Verium miners and my two printers, as well as an Intel NUC in the living room.

What comes next?

After reorganizing a bit of the home office, I’ll be turning up the USG security gateway and the 8-port switch very soon. At that point I’m likely to put all four pieces behind my secondary Internet connection (to enable the home network SLA to be maintained), and run some traffic through it.

I’m also giving serious thought to powering the USG through a PoE splitter like the Wifi Texas one ($18 on Amazon) so that all four devices can be powered from a single wall outlet (for the switch).

Check in soon for the second part of this journey, and feel free to share any suggestions, comments, references, designs, etc in the comments below.

 

 

Test-driving third party optics from StarTech in the RSTS11 labs

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Disclosures at the end, as usual.

This fall John Obeto asked if I’d be willing to try out some third party optical modules in some of the varied and random switches I have around the rsts11 home lab. Always willing to help a friend and try some new gadgets, I accepted the challenge. Today I’ll give you an idea of why you might consider third party optics for your switching, why you might not, and how the compatible modules from StarTech.com impressed me.

2018-12-01 14.02.27WHAT ARE OPTICAL MODULES?

First, a word on optical modules. For decades, switch manufacturers have made two kinds of ports on their switches, a fixed port and a modular port. Fixed ports were long popular on line cards, where you wanted to get 24-48 (or more) optical ports for fiber cabling into a small amount of space, and you knew your customer was not going to change their optical requirements on the fly.

Modular (or “pluggable”) ports, however, made it possible to sell switches at a lower initial cost and allow the uplinks to be populated later. It also enabled customers to use different connection lengths and media with the commensurate power considerations.

In Gigabit Ethernet (and 1/2/4 gigabit Fibre Channel), the standard has been the Small Formfactor Pluggable, or SFP, module. About the size of a AA battery or a small USB flash drive, it connects to a small blade port inside the switch, and “translates” the connection to short (SR), long, (LR), or extended/extreme (XR) range optics, or even to 1000Base-T copper.

For 10 Gigabit Ethernet (and 8/16 gigabit Fibre Channel), the standard is an extension of the same module called SFP+. Many installations within a rack or in adjacent racks will use copper SFP+ cabling (with no fiber involved), sometimes called Direct Attach Copper or DAC cabling. Continue reading →

Internet on the Road, part 2 – how to optimize your travel connectivity

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rsts11 note: This is the second of a two-part series featuring mobile internet routers. The first part is posted over on rsts11travel.com, as it is a bit milder technology. The second part appears on #rsts11 since it’s a bit more POHO than random travel, and will be cross-promoted on the travel side. 

When you travel, you probably have a number of devices that demand connectivity.

Many venues limit your allowed devices, and maybe you don’t want your devices out on the open network. Additionally, you may want to use streaming devices or shared storage in your room, and that may not work with typical public network setups. Last time we looked at some battery powered routers with charging functions and other network features.

Today on rsts11 we’ll look at some choices for sharing a wired connection as well as a cellular modem. We’ll briefly revisit the Hootoo and Ravpower routers from part 1, and then dive into Meraki, Peplink, and Cradlepoint devices for the higher-power user.  Continue reading →