[tlb]

Meraki APs can handle hundreds of clients, while most off-the-shelf APs fail beyond 8 or 16. You can manage them remotely. If someone is hogging your bandwidth, you can boot them off remotely. Clients can roam seamlessly between APs, which is essential when you have an office bigger than a few thousand square feet. I felt it was worth the money.

[pattern]

As another datapoint, I have been using a crappy old Linksys WRT54GL plus another $20 router to do every single thing you mention (except for handling large numbers of clients - although I would guess it would handle at least 20+ no sweat).

It's all thanks to Toastman's[1] version of the Tomato firmware. I wrote up a nice article[2] about my experience with the whole deal!

[1]: http://toastmanfirmware.yolasite.com/ [2]: http://www.verdantrefuge.com/writing/2012/toastman-tomato-fi...

[gonzo]

You'll have to explain 'why', before you can clear down this assertion.

The 802.11 MAC has limits, to be sure.