Uses for Meraki evaluation h/w once the license expires?

Networking & Firewalls
1

In 2019 Cisco sent me a number of their Meraki network devices to evaluate free of charge. They each came with a 3-year license.

I used the Meraki products for the 3 years in my home lab. I have two 8-port switches, an MX65 firewall, and an MR33 wireless access point.

They worked nicely in my home lab,. but after the 3-year “free” license period expired the cost of renewal was not justifiable, and I had already moved to a Netgate pfSense Plus firewall. I’m still using pfSense along with some Unifi switches and access points.

So the Meraki kit is just sitting there gathering dust. I have seen some Merkai products can be “re-purposed” using OpenWRT, but have yet to spend any time on it as I don’t really need the kit anymore. I’m loathe to throw it in the electrical waste bin at my local recycling center.

Does anyone have any useful suggestions. Thanks.

Mike.

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If you were in the USA, I’d offer to take them off your hands and fool with it. Did a quick look and some of the old stuff from like 8 years ago seems dead, not sure about now.

this thread makes it seem like newer hardware closed the open firmware loophole:
https://www.reddit.com/r/meraki/comments/hq8jee/opensource_firmware_options/

Might just be electronic scrap now.

3

I’ve just re-visited this after a few months because I came across the following article - “Saving the Meraki MX65 from eWaste with OpenWrt”.

http://www.makikiweb.com/ipv6/mx65_openwrt.html

I am now the proud owner of a re-puposed Meraki MX65 running OpenWRT. I thought I’d update this post just in case anyone else is searching for something similar.

Mike.

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