Cisco Meraki MG cellular gateways are a cloud managed WAN solution designed to seamlessly transpose a wireless cellular signal to wired Ethernet, providing primary or failover connectivity.
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Fortinet FortiExtender
Score 7.2 out of 10
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FortiExtender is the wireless WAN offering from Fortinet.
In client network we had fortigate firewall already which gives defacto selection for forti extender. meraki needs meraki firewall to implement MG device which increased the cost of project and complexity of implementation and project duration. also clients needs special …
It is perfect for WAN redundant connectivity when Cellular 5G is available; It solve temporary issues on delays with delivery of ISP connectivity. It plays a great role in SD-WAN environments due to the overall flexibility in combination with MXs and the wan selection based on the state of the art condition of the connectivity. It fits less in those scenario where there are multiple spots with iot devices requiring internet connectivity due to the cost, in that case it could be hard the ROI.
Fortinet FortiExtender is well suited to delivering fast 5G and LTE service. The cloud-based system is great so that our agency can manage the cloud from anywhere which is great during remote work. The Fortinet FortiExtender was easy to deploy and the system has been easy to manage. The Fortinet FortiExtender is less appropriate when it comes to the cost to implement and the customer support could be improved.
It's fantastic for being in the Meraki dashboard and actually looking at quality of signal. I can look at up times, down times, ease of use when it comes to if I would have to reboot the MG 21E in case it does have a problem.
Overall reliability: since we switched to the MG 21 E, we've rarely have a problem with it when it comes to the cellular performance going down.
From a user aspect, to just a provider of the internet source for myself, they're very easy to set up. I don't have any real complaints over it. We use T-Mobile as our cellular provider, so there is some limitations on the signal strength and coverage. We could use AT&T, but the integration between the Meraki T system and our preexisting corporate AT&T account, there seems to be no integrations there. So that's where I would say the limitations are. I would prefer that the AT&T onboarding allows us to connect to our corporate AT&T wireless account.
It is good when any problem occurred in our fiber cables but when it gets problematic then there isn’t any way out for us and its graphic interface is not helpful.
Its support team is useless and didn’t help in any regard.
We checked many vendors. ALU was a primary contender. However, their acccess points are not primarily designed for cellular use case. Cellular is just an additional feature on their fully loaded APs. The fact that MEraki MG is suited for this particular use case was a major factor.
By looking at the market of similar devices, we quickly recognized that Fortinet FortiExtenders are very reasonably priced; however, they provide top-level functionality that even some of the competitors don't have.
In terms of scalability, The MG Meraki is unvanquished! As it works on cellular signals, as long as you have the required signal strength, you are connected. Removes the dependency on cables to connect to our ISP. So geographical locations do not affect the scalability of MG. Which is the whole point of having a Cellular to Wired Ethernet Device. And it can also be managed with the web centrally.
Backup connectivity is helping us in many ways especially at times when connections run out and we have to perform any action that is essential to be done at times.
It provides a secure network.
With direct management, we can monitor and add and remove unwanted devices.
