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Free Cisco Access Point RRP US $499.00 - Just "Attend" The Live Webinar

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Free Cisco Access Point RRP US $499.00 - Just "Attend" The Live Webinar
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MrBillions on 16/08/2014 - 00:44 meraki.cisco.com (2422 clicks)
Last edited 16/08/2014 - 01:26

Get your free Cisco Meraki MR12 Access Point by following these three steps:

a) Register with a legitimate business sounding email address;
b) Accept a phonecall for verification (may or may not be needed but use a legit number);
c) "Attend" (watch) one of the live webinars during set times.

I used my my work email and mobile and it worked! You may or may not get a phone call but do not use free email providers as they will not give you the Free Access Point.

There are several Seminars to pick from the list and you can attend whichever one that suits you: https://meraki.cisco.com/webinars?region=us

Just sign up for one and get your freebie.

Watch this mumbling dude and you'll know what you will get: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhF-4iXneXM

Enjoy !

Computing Cisco Meraki Wireless Wireless Access Point

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closed Comments

  • tedibaba on 16/08/2014 - 00:52

    Thanks
    I am trying register.

    • jv on 16/08/2014 - 00:57
      +9

      try harder…

  • MrBillions on 16/08/2014 - 01:12

    or buy it from amazon. The RRP is $499 !

    http://www.amazon.com/Meraki-Single-Radio-Cloud-Managed-Wire…

    • hutsy on 16/08/2014 - 01:54
      +2

      You will also need a yearly license with that. (The free one comes with a 3 year license)
      http://www.amazon.com/Meraki-Enterprise-Subscription-License…

      Without it these are essentially paper weights. I have heard rumors of them being hacked with firmware (openWRT I think), but I don't think it's as easy as going into the web console and uploading an image file. From what I last heard someone had managed to get it to boot but not actually actively working.

      • MrBillions on 16/08/2014 - 07:01

        What you'll get with the package and AP and console works out of the box. Check the other videos from the mumbling guy and he gets it going within 1 minute.

      • damion on 16/08/2014 - 08:56
        +1

        Only the old units were able to run openWRT. The new units are pretty well locked down.
        I believe they'll keep operating after the license expires, but won't have any of the neat management features.

        • Grob on 19/08/2014 - 21:26

          only Linksys ones could run openWRT then Cisco purchased Linksys and re branded them.
          none of the true Cisco one could run openWRT that I know of.

  • phamid on 16/08/2014 - 01:18

    Oddly enough my client and I were looking into Meraki's recently.

    Hopefully we can snag a couple to test out as replacement APs.

    • damion on 16/08/2014 - 08:55

      The sales guy I spoke to seemed quite willing to send out various trial units to me. (In addition to the free unit)

  • thesab on 16/08/2014 - 04:06

    I work with Meraki gear on a daily basis, they are very good and crazy easy to setup

  • ryang on 16/08/2014 - 10:10
    +3

    Good stuff, until the license expires. If you're after long term, check out Unifi.

    • BiotBargin on 16/08/2014 - 10:49

      Aruba is another one worth scoping out

  • OZB Al on 16/08/2014 - 11:06
    +3

    Full T&C details from the site:

    Free AP for IT Professionals - Details
    IT professionals can receive a FREE Cisco Meraki access point (AP) with a 3-year cloud management license.
    While Cisco Meraki webinars are open to all audiences and while APs may be offered at live events, to be eligible for a free AP, participants must:

    Attend the live event or the live webinar in its entirety
    Enter a valid company name
    Be an IT professional
    Register with a shipping address in the US, CA, UK or the rest of the EEA, Croatia, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, or Puerto Rico. We cannot ship free APs outside of these regions and cannot ship to post office boxes.
    European countries require a valid VAT ID for shipment.
    Register with their organization's email address
    Confirm eligibility and shipping address with a Cisco Meraki representative by phone
    By accepting the AP you represent that you are authorized by your employer to accept the AP and that you will disclose receipt of the AP to your employer as and if required. If you are unable to accept your AP due to restrictions, then we will be happy to provide you with a trial AP, which can be returned following your evaluation of our solution. Limit one free AP per organization and per individual. Due to abuse, we cannot provide free access points to individuals who register with yahoo, gmail, hotmail, and other similar email addresses.

    • youknow on 16/08/2014 - 20:26
      +2

      "that you will disclose receipt of the AP to your employer as and if required"… hmmm, sounds like something that could be a problem in my company! Did it anyway! ;)

  • jimbo jones on 16/08/2014 - 14:11

    I got one last year after registering and watching the video presentation (on the train trip home).

    The device appeared whilst I was on holidays. Lucky the post-office held onto the device for the month or so I was away. Pretty nifty devices.

  • Mckenzie on 16/08/2014 - 20:54
    +2

    Any idea how long the webinar is?.

  • Moral hazard on 16/08/2014 - 23:51
    +1

    I'll "watch" it on Tuesday. And by that I mean I'll have someone press play on my laptop while I'm at work.

    I love expensive toys to hack, that's where all of the fun is!

  • Randxyz123 on 17/08/2014 - 01:18

    So I'm doing a CCNA course at Uni. I'm quite interested in this, though I have no idea what the hell to do with it… Will be interesting to see if my email gets accepted or not (student one)

  • pbvillaflores on 17/08/2014 - 06:12

    Will it be possible to run this without a POE switch?

    • haydio on 17/08/2014 - 09:06

      Yep, comes with a power adaptor in the box

  • BanannaMan on 17/08/2014 - 21:28

    6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
    I would never recommend this product
    By Jeff on January 4, 2014
    I received one of these free through Meraki's Webinar programs for IT professionals. First impressions were very good, it was fairly easy to setup and the Cloud UI is really neat. Not to mention the thing is made like a tank. (it has a metal base)

    Once setup though, the product falls very hard on it's face. The range of the device makes it absolutely worthless. I have a smaller 1500 sq ft single level home and there are areas that I only get 1 bar of very weak signal. I thought that maybe I just had it installed in a bad spot so I moved it to the middle of my home, installed it 6 feet up on the wall and the signal was still terrible! My free frontier wifi router had at least twice the coverage.

    Thinking that I maybe ended up with a bad one I contacted my sales rep and they informed me that the MR12 is designed for small offices and the performance I was experiencing was normal. This device would only work good if your home or office was a single small room. Outside of the room the signal fades very very fast. This makes me think that they intentionally limited the AP so that you would be forced to upgrade to a more expensive unit.

    Had I not received this unit for free I would have sent it back in a heart beat. Right now it's sitting in a box in my garage. I have another IT professional friend that had a very similar experience and his is also sitting in a box in his garage. Save your money, go with a different product.

    • ryang on 18/08/2014 - 09:06
      +1

      Thinking that I maybe ended up with a bad one I contacted my sales rep and they informed me that the MR12 is designed for small offices and the performance I was experiencing was normal. This device would only work good if your home or office was a single small room.

      Wow… That's terrible!

      As I said earlier, check out Unifi (http://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap/) - super cheap units, great management and performance.

      • eug on 20/08/2014 - 09:52

        I use UniFi at work. I'm watching the Meraki webinar now. It completely blows away the UniFi platform in terms of management. No competition at all.

        Of course, not everyone needs the extra features it provides. UniFi would be perfectly suitable (and much cheaper) for those applications.

    • bunnikins on 21/08/2014 - 11:24

      One of the major issue with the Accesspoints is interference. You do not want the signal of one leaking too much as you want to use the same RF channel at another AP providing you better capacity/better signal quality. Thats why their signal is designed to die quickly. In a corporate environment you might have few of these on a floor so the low signal helps in allowing a lot of these.

      But agree with you that they are useless at home as you want just want one to cover the complete house.

      • ryang on 21/08/2014 - 13:38

        That makes no sense. You either have a signal overlap or you have deadspots…

        • eug on 21/08/2014 - 13:43

          It's quite sensible. That's how mobile phone networks work too.

          By having more lower-powered APs rather than fewer higher-powered APs, you can reduce dead spots (you'll be more likely to have an AP near you if there are many of them) and be able to re-use frequencies in other parts of the building while minimizing interference.

        • ryang on 21/08/2014 - 14:21

          @eug: sounds like a great way to sell more overpriced gear to me.. I'll stick with my Unifi and their coverage.

        • eug on 21/08/2014 - 14:46

          @ryang: You do realize that UniFis use the same concept right? That's why they have the UniFi UAP and UAP-LR. LR = Long Range.

          I installed UniFis at work and they are fine for what they're designed to do. From the webinar alone I can see that the Meraki system does way, way more. If I were a large organization with lots of users and a big budget, I would definitely prefer Meraki over UniFi. For smaller business or home users, it's way overkill. You wouldn't buy a Cisco 2960 switch for your home NAS would you?

        • ryang on 21/08/2014 - 15:21
          +1

          @eug: But I'm not talking about home users.

          Meraki and Unifi are targeted at businesses of all sizes, and I wouldn't recommend Meraki unless there was a very compelling reason. The hardware is a lot more expensive upfront and ongoing.

          Re: Cisco 2960 - might be worth looking at UBNT's new switches.. ;)

        • eug on 21/08/2014 - 15:53

          @ryang: Did you watch the intro webinar? If you did, surely you would agree that Meraki can do way more than UniFi.

          UniFi is great for many use cases. Meraki is great at even more use cases. You will obviously pay a good amount for the extra features of course, as with anything Cisco.

          (this has gone off-topic - we were talking about low-power APs being low-powered for a reason)

        • bunnikins on 21/08/2014 - 16:28
          +1

          @eug: Another benefit of the Meraki APs is the Deep Packet Inspection (DPI). This allows to monitor the individual webpages visited and if need be block them. Also firewall is built into each device. Also search for a device all over your network to list the locations where a single device has been. Quite a lot more. But I do agree that UniFi UAP and UAP-LR are good for home if you are tight on budget and want heaps of coverage with one access point.

  • lplau on 20/08/2014 - 10:50
    +2

    After you finish the webinar, you get a survey answer that and they will send you a email to contact somebody to confirm details.

    They will ask you a heap of questions like:
    What does your company do?
    Why do you want one?
    Are you interested in becomming a vendor?
    What do you like about meraki?
    What was the most interesting part of the webinar?

    etc. etc.

    Its almost like a interview haha.
    They won't send it to a residential address.

    • Pone on 20/08/2014 - 14:50
      +1

      Got the same email after mine too…

    • Warehouse on 21/08/2014 - 03:43
      +2

      here i thought i was gonna get an expensive toy to play with for free..
      waited till 3am to "attend" this seminar just to find out I have to call up and probably be denied a test unit since I made up a bs company (with a real non-free email) lol..

      can't we just fill out a form rather than call up afterwards?

      • bunnikins on 21/08/2014 - 11:26
        -3

        Bad sales tactics from these guys.

        • eug on 21/08/2014 - 11:37
          +2

          Why?

          Do you expect them to give away expensive APs to any random person who pretends to watch a video, or should they be targeting people who might actually buy them?

          What would you do if it were your business?

        • bunnikins on 21/08/2014 - 13:52
          -1

          @eug: bad because in the terms and conditions they did not mention anything like that, if they did not want to hand them out, they should have mentioned in the terms and conditions!

        • eug on 21/08/2014 - 14:20
          +1

          @ozsniper: Did you read the terms and conditions?
          https://meraki.cisco.com/freeap

          Free AP for IT Professionals

          •Attend the live event or the live webinar in its entirety
          •Enter a valid company name
          •Be an IT professional
          •Register with a shipping address in the US, CA, UK or the rest of the EEA, Croatia, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, or Puerto Rico. We cannot ship free APs outside of these regions and cannot ship to post office boxes.
          •European countries require a valid VAT ID for shipment.
          •Register with their organization's email address
          •Confirm eligibility and shipping address with a Cisco Meraki representative by phone

          So … the OP made up a fake company name and does not want to talk to them on the phone.

          Whose fault is that?

        • bunnikins on 21/08/2014 - 15:11

          @eug: Thats true, fake company name is the not a good way to go. Though I did attend the Webinar and work for an IT company but yesterday I got an email saying "Unfortunately resellers don't qualify for the promotional units." Wierd that they are putting up any excuse to get out of the free access point although the reseller clause was not part of the terms.

        • eug on 21/08/2014 - 15:47
          -1

          @ozsniper: Well… the title of the offer on the Meraki site is "Free AP for IT Professionals". A reseller would not be considered an "IT Professional". Someone like a network admin or IT manager would.

          In any case, surely a reseller would be able to get free demo units regardless of this deal?

        • bunnikins on 21/08/2014 - 15:50

          @eug: You can be an IT professional and your company can be a reseller also. I work for a company with 10,000+ employees though but the deal isn't so simple I guess.

        • eug on 21/08/2014 - 15:59
          -1

          @ozsniper: Then I'd imagine it's because resellers would have their own way of getting free demo hardware. Especially big resellers - I'd imagine Cisco would happily send reps over to do a hands-on demo rather than a non-personal webinar!

  • drewbles on 20/08/2014 - 19:30

    I wonder if the higher end stuff is better. It looks great feature wise (in the Webinar as I type).

    Been looking for something for guest wifi devices at work so it's a way to play around and maybe replace the 3-4 other AP's I have (providing the higher end models have better range).

  • mirz on 21/08/2014 - 21:32

    fulfilled all condition, tried to call that number from email few time. no one answered, left msg on answering machine. sent email to them, no response.

    can't be stuffed anymore. i would call this crap service.

    • phamid on 21/08/2014 - 21:46
      +2

      I believed I've fulfilled all of the criterion too, heck, I even have a client who actually wants to buy a few already!!
      This rep I've been assigned is likely to be swamped by fakes with dodgy details, which has taken up her time to follow up on legitimate people like myself.

      Honestly, if people out there thought they were going to score a free AP to throw on ebay for a quick buck, their kidding themselves.

    • drewbles on 26/08/2014 - 11:18

      If you have someone's name starting with J and a Sydney number, I have the same. I emailed again today and got an 'out of office' reply, so the person exists.

      I have left many voicemails, no response. I'm going to email my Cisco account rep and say 'what gives'. Offering this, taking an hour of my time (for admittedly an interesting product presentation) and then not fulfilling their promise is very very poor.

      I didn't get a survey, but I registered with my CCO account email, so they know i'm a legitimate IT professional. Really not impressed (I actually do need some AP's to deploy around our 4 offices around the world, and it would have been a good option).

  • eddie3330 on 24/08/2014 - 14:44
    +1

    Also met the criteria have tried calling a few times no responses at all.

  • Webber on 25/08/2014 - 17:20
    +2

    Well going by the comments above I guess I got very lucky.

    After the webinar I got an email saying to ring the Cisco Rep. He was based in the UK so ringing seemed too hard, so I just emailed him saying I would like a Meraki AP to try out to see how it would fit in with my customers needs.
    I got no reply from him but the next day I got a shipping notification from UPS.

    Today a package from Cisco arrived, opened it up and inside was a Meraki MR18! Jackpot!

    • drewbles on 26/08/2014 - 11:19

      Would you care to message me some details? I'd like to call them (I frequently am awake for UK hours as we have offices there). I'll call and let them know their AP counterparts are not doing anything.

      • Webber on 26/08/2014 - 11:59
        +1

        Can't send you a message, says you do not accept new conversations or some such nonsense.

        Here's the email I got after the webinar with the email address I sent to:

        Thanks for attending our webinar today. We hope you found the information useful. You can find our recorded webinars and slides posted near the bottom of the page here.

        Instructions to claim your free AP:
        1. Check the rules to see if you qualify for a free AP.
        2. Call us to confirm your eligibility and shipping address. Please contact your Cisco Meraki representative using the information below:
        Steve Booth
        (415) 432-1352
        [email protected]

        Looking forward to chatting soon,
        Steve

        Copyright © 2013 Cisco Systems, Inc. | 32-38 Saffron Hill, London, EC1N 8FN

        • drewbles on 26/08/2014 - 13:48

          Thanks i'll try him. The one I have is just not responding. Most disappointing!

    • Pone on 26/08/2014 - 16:42

      Yep, it's an MR18, just confirmed with email.

  • unifex on 26/08/2014 - 13:50

    Id look into what information these AP send back to cisco. was talking to a guy at work and he said they are designed to gather data for cisco.

    • drewbles on 26/08/2014 - 14:09

      Shove a packet sniffer in line, and see what it's doing.

      Of course they're going to have a lot of information, but the devil is, as they say, in the details (of the licence and t&c's).

    • OZB Al on 28/08/2014 - 09:35

      Saying they are "designed to gather data for cisco" is some impressively random shit. Does he wear a tin foil hat by any chance?

      • unifex on 30/08/2014 - 20:58

        They do. They use these to model internet traffic. You don't get stuff for free dude.

        Meraki license specifically says it can use your internet traffic for their own uses and may resell that information to third parties.

  • drewbles on 27/08/2014 - 13:31

    So if anyone is waiting for a reply, there's a worldwide sales conference this week. All my contacts have bounced with out of office for the week, and when I did get a reply it was stating they were out of the office for the entire week.

    • eug on 27/08/2014 - 18:16

      Yup, they'll be back on the 2nd, which would be the 3rd here.

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