Likelihood to Recommend Actually if we place it into the internet gateway, we do nothing in front of the firewall. Yes, it's working well also, if we put into the routing, it works well. But we should not use it instead of switch. Because some people tend to use the router instead of layer three suite. So yes, I try to use it.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Pros The ISR 4000 is an excellent router for our voice services. We purchased CUBE licensing in order to do this. The ISR 4000 is an excellent router for security purposes as well. We purchased the security license with the router and that allowed us to run a Zone-Based Firewall. The ISR 4000 is very simple and straight forward to configure. Read full review 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. Read full review Cons A greater number of onboard WAN ports would be an improvement over the model we purchased, which only had two. [This] means we'll have to buy more expensive network cards to get more convenience. The small router was a plus in some branches, but it was a hindrance in others. Its width is about half the size of the rack, so we had to keep it on top of another device. When compared to its competitors, the rack mounting kit is unreliable and expensive to purchase. Read full review 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. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We renew Cisco end of life devices with current models.
Read full review Usability Cisco Integrated Services 4000 series routers are very easy to use and manage. With the use of integrated management controllers, you can deploy new sites within minutes
Read full review Support Rating There is always room for improvement with support, but Cisco support has been good to me over the years. Being able to call or submit online TAC cases makes it so I can get my issues or questions answered faster. They have even added the TAC bot for TAC cases to get to support even faster!
Read full review 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating If you planning on upgrading your network to software defined networks, Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers are the best. To successfully implement the project you need to plan and communicate with all your stake holders
Read full review Alternatives Considered We did not compare the Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers to other competitors as we used Cisco for a long period of time already. We selected this product as we used a lot of CISCO products in the past and with good support. Other products don't have the protocols that CISCO products have.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Scalability 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.
Read full review Return on Investment Can be used for ISE, Meraki access point, FTD firewall, works well, no worry about integration with any third party product. As this device can be multipurpose, ROI is faster and usable for longer period of time, as no EOL any time soon This is an integrated modular device so even if my small offices are closed over a period of time, this can be re-purposed for other requirements within organization This device supports WAN optimization within software. This reduces the requirement of that specific optimization device, which reduces my overall cost for a branch network Read full review 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. Read full review ScreenShots