Cisco 1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 1000) vs. Cisco Meraki SD-WAN

- It is well suited for companies that have a big WAN environment, this devices can fit in there easily and have multiple provider circuits. - Well suited for private cloud environments where multi tenancy is required, - Device can be used as IPN/ISN device as it supports jumbo frames for an ACI multi-site/remote leaf deployment. - Device is well suited for branches that have their own DIA and MPLS circuits.

At our level, we had to optimize our 3 internet links (MPLS and LTE) with applications like O365, SAP, Microsoft CRM Dynamics and our collaborative work tools like Teams. We also had to ensure that both client workstations and servers could communicate with minimal latency with our Microsoft Intune infrastructure.

Incentivized

• These routers are very good at performing 24x7! This is key to running an organization where employees are working 24x7.
• The ZBFW feature works especially well to help lockdown and protect your network.
• Having the ability to perform in-service upgrades is a key feature in keeping your network up at all times.

Incentivized

• Meraki has been beautifully done for people who are actually very lean on the IT infrastructure as in resources wise. So Meraki is a very good solution to give them the simplicity on a single glass plan where they can actually have visibility over all their networks on a single glass plane by a click of button, they could actually see what's happening. They could actually do troubleshooting on the fly, including packet capture, which is such a smooth feature. Usually myself including I've been have an engineering background, all my ears packet capture, I've never seen that smooth and easy to operate that you can actually have a high level understanding or deep level depending on how much you want to go in with the click of a button. That's so beautiful. I mean everything for me Meraki is point of kind of a go ahead for everyone.

Incentivized

• The ASR 1000 series routers can, as with most devices, improve with additional memory capacity and upgraded chip sets for faster processing.
• There seems to be limitations on the number of routing sessions the smaller ASR devices can handle, which can be overcome with proper planning and placement within the network.

Incentivized

• The platform itself is very feature-rich. One of the difficulties we find is that to do things, for example, in terms of monitoring and obtaining data, it's not consistent. There are multiple interfaces to get them, but you can't get the same data through all interfaces. So you end up having to try to find either the least common denominator or we have to build our own code that then mines through all the interfaces and that becomes very problematic.
• The other problem we've found is that there are issues where the same amount of expected software quality isn't really there in all releases. Cisco breaks things out by like shorter or long-lived release trains. And the long-lived release trains tend to have good quality by the time you get to the second or third release within it. But then those are skips. There are like 12, 18 months skips in between those. So if you start releasing features on versions in between there practically to be safe, you have to wait until you know much later. So to be able to see new future capabilities as they come out and deploy those readily needs to improve, it needs to be much faster.

Incentivized

The device without a doubts performs at the level required and expected, we can renew it and use it as we have been using it for years. The device can be used as DCI, IPN/ISN, or even private cloud for customer circuit handoff, it also supports IPSec properly. The device is well suited in multiple segments of the network.

We implemented Meraki in most of our organization sites, so we are always looking for ways of improving its usage, add more features and discover characteristics that we do not know we already have. As it is an easy to use tool and we are growing, hiring new employees, it is really simple to onboard the new joiners.

Incentivized

All our modular contingency service exercises use this equipment, it allows us to perform this type of exercises very easily, in a controlled and effective way. It is used at least once a month for these types of events. It also allows configuration replication in computers that are under the same model.

Incentivized

We have received training on the equipment, which has made us add more networks on our own, we provide first level support, we validate the publication of the equipment and we can satisfy the needs of our internal clients in terms of the prompt recovery of the affected services

Incentivized

Fast and efficient. The only issue currently is that the support is only overseas support and not in South Africa, which causes delays in resolution for some cases. Escalating issues is quite simple and the opening of new cases from the dashboard is easy. I have never had a support issue that could not be resolved.

Incentivized

Implementation was as per design and all best practice configuration was followed.

Incentivized

Before standardizing on the Cisco ASR 1000 we had explored the idea of using Juniper routers. Ultimately we felt the Cisco ASR 1000 was a better fit at the time. We have been very happy with this decision, but it might not be the right decision for everyone. It fit our environment and our needs very well, Juniper is also a very good choice.

The Sonic wall and Cisco ASA required a lot of trial and error to get up and running. Rules and configurations were difficult to setup and were not intuative. Meraki is very ituative.

Incentivized

Being a cloud-first solution, Meraki Dashboard will scale as needed without any effort for the client. The Meraki cloud will provision (upscale and downscale) the resources as you grow or shrink in size. You only have to physically install the MX on your site, all the management is one through the Internet via Meraki Dashboard. Worth noting that you can fully-configure the MX prior to the physical installation on site.

Incentivized

• It is a healthy return on investment with planned packed size data. Average unicast latency is low and consistent with small and large packets (barring mid-sized).
• Cisco devices last longer and also have a decent trade-in policy to recover some value when equipment is replaced.
• Higher concurrent IPSec tunnels are offered, we tested for 1500+, fielding both encrypted and a mix of encrypted and cleartext traffic.

Incentivized

• Cisco Meraki SD-WAN gave us a new perspective on SDN, ZTP and other automation tools we didn't have before
• The sizing of Meraki MX series cannot compete very large and robust networks, only if we use virtual appliances. In this case, I would recommend on other vendors like Fortinet

Incentivized