Meraki promises. Meraki delivers.
I recently took delivery of a Meraki access point. I didn’t really need another access point but the hype eventually got to me. To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what it would do. All I knew, was what I had been told…
- The Meraki would bring free or cheap internet
- Meraki will wrestle the lucrative internet subscriber market from the grip of Telstra and Optus
- Meraki would allow users to route around what isn’t working and arrive somewhere better than it was before
If all this talk doesn’t yet have you convinced, then maybe my experience with a Meraki will.
5 days after installing my Meraki I had earned $20US and my neighbours love me!
The Meraki Dashboard allows you to sell your unused bandwidth (or as Meraki describes it, ‘Monetise’). Within the ‘Configure’ area of the Meraki Dashboard my newly created network is automatically set to be free for a period of 20 minutes. I am then able to set my paid access levels. I currently charge a modest $0.50US per hour for a 250kbps connection and for those that want a bit more speed, $1.00US gets them a 500kbps connection.
The monetisation of your under utilised monthly bandwidth is a handy feature, but not one that motivated my purchase. I am more interested in joining the wider Meraki network and paying less for my bandwidth. If someone else can use my bandwidth when I am not, and vice versa, than that’s a good thing. My aim is to completely pay off my hardware and then I will flick part of my connection over to free public use. The Meraki dashboard allows you to split your connection into an uninhibited local private network and a public network. I will either speed up or slow down the allowable bandwidth on the public network depending on whether I am nearing my monthly quota or not.
Meraki is busy spreading the hype in San Francisco, and its working. Many neighbourhoods now have free access to the net via a wireless Meraki network identified as ‘freethenet’ (SSID). So how do we do create a free wireless network here in Australia, or in my case, Redfern? It is possible to share an internet connection over a very large distance using a mesh of repeaters, however as the mesh grows, so do the number of users, and there in lies the challenge. In order to achieve a large free-to-use wireless network there must be many within the network willing to share their ISP provided internet connection, a connection they pay for. Now I am not a radio-wireless geek so I am only guessing, but I would expect that in order for this to work, every 10th house in a street would need to share their paid internet connection, and every 5th house would need a repeater. Not a big ask, but it remains a challenge. I think it can be done, we just need to spread the word.
Messaging
Heck, you’re not using all your bandwidth anyway. Run some ads over the connection you share if you want to. Really? Ads? Yes, Meraki also allows you to place your own ads or messages in web pages that are served using your public network. The messages are relatively unobtrusive (I love that word), served in what appears like a toolbar at the top of the web page. Advertise what ever you want… your business, your favourite corner store, your political views – its up to you.
Usage Reporting
The Meraki dashboard comes packed with some great usage reports. View usage across all Meraki devices or view usage per device (a device being either a gateway or a repeater). The email addresses of those that use your connection are available as well so if you expect your service to be unavailable for a period of time you could email your happy subscribers and give them advance warning – like all good ISP’s would 
Not sure how that stacks up in terms of privacy though.
Go forward and multiply
Wireless mesh networking is truly an exciting development. The only reason why it hasn’t worked in the past is because we haven’t had a device that makes it easy for the technology unsavvy consumer to setup and use. We have that now. I believe that the reason why we have expensive broadband in Australia is because we rely on wire being laid to our doorstep. It is time to reap the benefits of wireless. It’s time for a cheaper, free internet. And to adapt a phrase from the Treasurer of the last Federal Government: “Get a Meraki for yourself, one for your husband and one for the country”.
Muahahahaha! Have Meraki mailed you a check yet?
Hi Brad, I noted that you referred to one of my posts, so I thought I’d check out your write up on Meraki. Been following it since they started last year, but been busy so haven’t got around to setting up some trails here in PNG for myself. I’m hoping that they can be some sort of solution for the criminally insane internet pricing we have here.
Just curious…How many customers do you have? And have you had any major issues so far?
How long have I known you and how long have we worked together? I have to admit that I didn’t know you had a blog, well shame on me.
Nice write up btw, playing with mine now.
I’m guessing you got the pro, cos I haven’t got the monetise option.
The Meraki cheque! No Mark, I have not received if as yet. I figure I’ll take a picture of it and blog post it for all to see though. Thanks for the vision.
Emmanuel. I have 4 customers. Soon I’ll have paid off my hardware and I can flick the SSID over to ‘freethenet’
Luke. How may times have I told you I had a blog
. I actually only paid for a standard Meraki (not the Pro). I think the introduction of editions happened after I purchased my Meraki. When I installed I was offered the opportunity to upgrade to Pro, so I did.
Check out this Meraki Google maps mashup that allows you to plot the location of your Meraki’s. I am on there, are you?
Great article! Keep spreading the love!
Handy little URL folks to check the usage on a particular Meraki node: http://sf.meraki.com/myrepeater/{your meraki MAC address}
Or for usage across a network: http://public.meraki.com/network/{your network name}
Also, check out the forum if you have unanswered questions: http://forums.meraki.com/
Oh, and if anyone is in need of a wireless internet connection at Redfern Station, tune in to SSID ‘noworries’. I’ll be adding more bandwidth to this node in the next couple of weeks. It is a popular gateway node that one. See the ‘noworries’ network here: http://public.meraki.com/network/noworries
As promised, a picture of my first Meraki Cheque. Slowly paying off my hardware costs
What really disappointed my though was that it cost me $8 to convert this $US cheque in to $AUS.
Hi Brad – just bought my first meraki (pro) and have been tinkering with how to best set it up. What text do you use on your splash page to reassure people accessing your network that you are the real deal and won’t scam their CC details? Would be very keen to see what you’ve got.
Also – I’ve been trying to post the details of my network to icanhazmeraki.net without success – any tips?
link to my network…
http://public.meraki.com/network/thecp/
[Rainer said] “What text do you use on your splash page to reassure people accessing your network that you are the real deal and won’t scam their CC details?”
Hi Rainer. Glad to hear from you. Hopefully the Meraki logo(s) on the splash page is enough to instill confidence in your network. I have since moved from a PRO edition network to STANDARD as I felt the network would grow faster using this model. I will obviously be up for a large sum when it comes time to upgrade, if I upgrade. My splash page currently looks like this:
The only thing that annoyed me was that the outbound bandwidth limit couldn’t be adjusted to anything lower then 20kb/s. Which sucks, cause I only have 25kb/s outbound on my line. I was hoping to set it to about 10kb/s minimum.
Hope they change this soon.
Thanks for your comment Purana… 25kb/s outbound is quite a low outbound bandwidth (sounds like a very slow dialup connection) – are you working in bits or bytes? I assume the Meraki dashboard is measuring its bandwidth in kilobits per second (kb/s or kbps), not kilobytes per second (kB/s). That being the case, if you are after a setting of 10 kilobytes per second (10 kB/s) that set the Meraki bandwidth controller to 80kb/s. (using 8 bits to a byte)
Hey mate,
Well done on the whole ’sharing the web’. Muchos kudos.
I am thinking of setting up something myself (using the pro set up), and have a question about the whole mesh side of things. Just like you, I will be using any cash earned to pay for hardware, but I was wondering what happens when you have a pro network and a non pro network operating side by side? Do they mesh? how does this work?
Hi Martin. It would appear that regardless of whether neighbouring meraki networks are of type pro or standard, they will mesh. In the same way that neighbouring networks will mesh: this post talks about it a little: http://forums.meraki.com/viewtopic.php?t=2298. The networks though will remain separately administrable via the dashboard.
BTW I discovered a great facility that enables you to move your gateways and repeaters around in order to achieve the highest quality network connection: Meraki Setup Assistant (you will first need to connect to your meraki network)
Does each repeater halve the bandwidth?
Thanks for the write up.
How vast is this network in Sydney? I am in the southern suburbs….how does one find out how many people would have meraki if any?
@dean : There is a google maps mash-up of registered Meraki devices at http://icanhazmeraki.net/
The mash-up relies on Meraki owners to manually register their devices however so there are likely to be many more Meraki devices in Sydney then are shown. Zooming into Sydney shows that there is a Meraki device in Cronulla… and many in the city of Sydney. Happy wireless sharing!