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.

So well suited, if you look at operations that have say sorry, facilities or locations that have around up to around a thousand employees or like some of our diverse manufacturing facilities that have smaller amounts of bandwidth that have high uptime requirements, the system is very flexible with regards to how fault tolerance is addressed, how redundancy is built that allows us to accommodate those needs. It has some nice built-in security features that allow us also to be able to adapt to different conditions. The problem we struggle with it the same time though, is that when you activate some of those other more feature capabilities, the throughput of the platform begins to drop fairly significantly. So if you add too many security features or too many other features onto it, you try to put in a bigger and bigger device in order to accommodate the same amount of throughput that you need. And, what happens then is that the overall cost now becomes prohibitive and it's no longer desirable to be deployed. There are other options that are better. The other side is that when you pass a certain amount of total throughput, so if we have campuses or larger locations that may have 5,000, 6,000 employees at them the size of the device, again, that's needed to be able to do that becomes cost prohibitive to do it. So again, that benefit that we're looking for, it seems to have a sweet spot, right? That's like between 10 megabits and one gigabit. And we don't really seem to have a good solution in the platform to address some of the other ones for us right now. Thankfully, those level of ones are very small. We don't have that many occurrences of really high throughput requirements, but we do see that in the future growing. So we're certainly looking for options for how to address those.

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

• The core of the product itself architectural-wise is designed very well for scale. So from the backend, for example, the ability to support a large number of diversified locations and a flexibility in on topology and how those can be deployed.
• Bosch has a very complex kind of a deployment where how its remote sites around the world are connected. We have well over 1200 locations in our wholly-owned operations. And those are deployed in regions, I mean, literally all around the world. So for us to be able to be flexible in how the topology of those sites are deployed was fairly significant.

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

• Troubleshooting. Missing some command line access to look at specific parameters or status.
• Access management. Role based security needs to be enhanced and be more granular.
• Executive dashboards, KPI tracking, etc. natively in the Meraki dashboards.
• Core networking access, features, protocols. We're still waiting for BGP!

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.

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

Because [Cisco] Meraki SD-WAN has fulfilled the required functionality with the easy deployment of the configuration of new sites and growth, in addition to one of the integrations that Meraki has in general as a platform and the centralized management of everything through a single Dashboard. [...] The best thing is that [Cisco] Meraki SD-WAN is included from the enterprise licensing of the MX.

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

• Good ROI for us because we do not have to outsource management or hire a dedicated resource to manage
• Lifetime hardware support is excellent.
• Tech support is excellent and reachable.
• The yearly licensing is pricey, but when you need the support, it makes it worth it.

Incentivized