Cisco 1000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 1000)
Score 9.2 out of 10
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Cisco 1000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 1000) provides software-defined WAN and integrated security features.
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Cisco Meraki SD-WAN
Score 8.8 out of 10
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Cisco Meraki SD-WAN is a software-defined WAN offering transport independence, application optimization, intelligent path control, and secure connectivity.
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Pricing
Cisco 1000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 1000)
Cisco Meraki SD-WAN
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco 1000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 1000)
Chose Cisco 1000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 1000)
We have used DLink and Fortinet Routers. I find Cisco superior in management, reliability and overall network performance over the two. I will say Fortinet has not experienced any failures and does provide very similar functionality, I simply find Cisco to be my preferred …
Cisco 1000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 1000)
Cisco Meraki SD-WAN
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
This is effective for businesses who need a network solution that works more or less out of the box, without having to coordinate multiple additional devices in the configuration process. Correspondingly, users with needs for more advanced functionality or configurability, or modification may benefit from a different model or different product line.
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.
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.
Right now in the ASR nine twenties, we're having an issue with its shooting out power adapter errors when there really isn't any. And we're not really sure we're working with Cisco Tex to see if it's a bug and if there's a bug fix.
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.
I would rate these routers useability as 9/10 - I've designed and deployed Cisco solutions for the last 20 or so years, so, therefore, know what I am buying and try to get an understanding of the capabilities before deploying. The Cisco 1000 series Integrated Service Router is a rock-solid investment with great throughput "out of the box".
With any Cisco product, you are very well supported by the Technical Assistance Centre (TAC). This is one of the major plus points when selecting Cisco networking products - working in IT for the last 20years you soon appreciate that it is impossible to know everything and that there are people within Cisco you can lean-on when you need assistance.
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.
The implementation basically works, you configure it and it's easy to use, the problem with implementation using this kind of products is the fact that complex things require very complex configurations and the troubleshooting is too complicated due to a missing web interface or missing integrations that simplify that part. troubleshooting consist only in debugging via CLI.
These devices are still supported unlike most ISR800's, faster and cheaper than ISR 4000's. They are a true all in one box solutions. The IR1800 and IR1100 are great for DC power solutions, but are costly if environmentally hardened devices are not required. Coupled with a low cost, what is not to love.
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.
Once your template is set up Meraki is easy to scale. Even creating the template is easy and I was able to learn enough in 4 hours to build, test, and deploy templates for our locations. Best part is you can stage your deployment by adding a unit to a template even before taking it out of the box.
It was mostly around logs. I mean I understand because the aim is to provide the simplified solution to the people as an end user, be it an IT manager or the oil team. So I understand where you don't have lots of tools assigned where you can actually take help from the track. But in terms of having that logging information, I think that's where it's been a bit of a kind of journey where struggling, we have been struggling there.
