Cisco offers the Meraki brand of Ethernet switches.
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Cisco Meraki MX
Score 9.1 out of 10
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Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls is a combined UTM and Software-Defined WAN solution. Meraki is managed via the cloud, and provides core firewall services, including site-to-site VPN, plus network monitoring.
Cisco Meraki MS is ideal for small-medium and remote offices where IT staff never visit. I don't feel they are ready to support large offices or campuses with thousands of people. However in my opinion some offices can be Cisco Meraki MS and others can be Catalyst and it can …
We selected Cisco Meraki MS for the facility to have the administration trough the Meraki Cloud, give us a lot of flexibility about troubleshooting, new configuration and monitoring. Also when you have Meraki licence enabled you have full support from Cisco in case you need it. …
Cisco Meraki MS switches are cheaper and the setup and configuration is much faster than traditional classic Cisco switches. Also the available free Dashboard offers easy access to monitoring and assurance services. Whereas with classic Cisco switches there is a need for …
Meraki MX should be accompanied with the Security license to provide routing an security capabilities. The MX series provide great insite and is foundational to Meraki SD WAN and for setting up Cisco Secure Connect or the more advanced SASE solution from Cisco. Meraki MX is …
It's going to be cambium and unify mostly. Right now it's mostly on the same line. Actually. It's not leading anymore. It's on the same line, but if it's not stepping up the game, it's maybe losing.
A lot of the times we choose Meraki just because it is so easy to manage, and we feel a great synergy when we switch to everything meraki-based. For example when we are able to have both access points and switches from Meraki it becomes a lot easier to manage compared to if we …
Hands down Cisco Meraki switches beat out the competition. Yes, you have to have the licensing, but it is worth it to centrally managing them all from a "single pane of glass."
Deutsche telekom is a Cisco partner; we work together and market Meraki customers to our customers. Solutions are tested and installed and deployed at the customer's premises based on requirements. depending on the customer's situation, a wide range of products are used. MR, …
Meraki Access points are also cloud managed and work hand in hand with Meraki MS. Since controller is cloud based, all the info is looked up on one portal. The portal is intutive and provides a lot of info. With the MS capable of stacking its even better
Meraki MS does not have the full feature set of Catalyst switches, however, the ease of deployment and implementation in less stringent environments makes them a great option
We have meraki access points with ISE radius integration for user authentication. Cisco MS is the right switch we can use it for the APs . It provides POE and easy troubleshooting tools especially when the AP is not physically reachable. Mearki AP deployment is very easy, we only …
we use both classic Cisco switches and Cisco Meraki MS switches but for differents infrastructures and different customers. Cisco Meraki switches are clearly better for large and fast deployments on non-complex environments and are very easy to maintain and update. There is …
Meraki switches are extremely easy to manage, monitor, and deploy. This being said, a smaller site that is new, or a site that might have some brand other than Cisco can easily be replaced by Meraki. This deployment doesn't take but a day or so, so cutting down time of …
Meraki is just easier to use and deploy. It’s not the cheapest option, nor is it the most feature rich or performant firewall platform. But when you need something that works and meets PCI/HIPAA compliance, with very little effort to use, this is the ideal platform for you. …
The Meraki Dashboard has been a lot more intuitive than CradlePoint NetCloud. We switched from CradlePoint to Cisco Meraki MX because we were already familiar with the interface which allowed us to be familiar with a single dashboard.
Overall, for a new network admin or a non-IT person, the Cisco Meraki MX is much easier to configure for a single site than the Cisco ASA Firewalls. ASA can be quicker for those with a background in Cisco command line OS.
Z4 Teleworker Gateway is a suitable alternative for very small offices or homework stations. It offers the possibility of SD-WAN, LAN and WLAN capabilities. Functionality is of course slightly limited compared to a full stack Meraki environment, but is still a very viable …
For a small remote office, Cisco Meraki MX was compared to the PaloAlto next gen firewall.
Whilst the company prefers the use of PaloAlto for internet destined traffic, the office features and simplicity of management meant the Cisco Meraki MX was an easy choice for a small …
Cisco Meraki MX is easy if you don't need multi-tenancy solutions and if the routing in the network is not so complex. But Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN solution is more powerful and has more features compared to Meraki.
Cisco Meraki has the smart switch and MX firewalls down. I think in order it would go Cisco Meraki, Netgear, Linksys than Sonic Wall. Cisco just stacks up against the other well because their UI is amazing and their knowledge base is vas. Also, Cisco's support lines are …
Compared to the regular Cisco devices, the greatest thing will always be the ease of configuration that the Cisco Meraki MX gives by having a dashboard to eliminate a command line that can be difficult for some beginners, it is easier to identify if you make mistakes and fix …
It is easier to implement and affordable. If you like Cisco products and you believe in their ecosystem and future, you will not be wrong selecting Cisco Meraki MX or Viptela from their portfolio.
I have used OpenMesh which is no longer around.
But stacked up against Cisco Meraki MX, there was no competition. Cisco Meraki MX overall had
better features, deployment, Ease of use, and Hardware performance. One of the
We were able to transition very easily from Cisco to Cisco Meraki MX's and connect the LANs into a single easy to manage WAN with remote access VPN and auto VPN between branches to interconnect all networks with minimal fuss but allowing high-speed networking and traffic …
I mentioned I came from a Dell SonicWall 2600, which I felt was
a good product. However, the Cisco Meraki MX Firewall is in a whole other
class. I wanted to be able to manage my networking in the cloud, which the
I have used Sonicwall and Meraki, and they are very similar and functional, but they go about it in different ways. Meraki is a little more user-friendly with less of a learning curve, but it comes at a little steeper price. I do like the online dashboard of Meraki better, …
A Cisco Meraki solution should always be in the toolbox for a small-medium office. Especially for a project team that moves around a bit. It is very easy to deploy and if after 6 months the project moves to another location, re-deployment times are much faster than traditional kit. Whilst it could do the job. It is not at the point of replacing a large corporate office of Catalyst Switches but we feel it does not need to do that necessarily.
the Cisco Meraki MX 's work great for us we have over 40 locations and each has it's own Cisco Meraki MX that connects to our main Cisco Meraki MX in our datacenter. Each site then connects to Meraki switches and access points. Very easy to setup and keep running smoothly. Secure and easy for users to get connected to VPN.
I think when it comes to the Meraki products, it's just the ease of use and ease of troubleshooting because it's all cloud-based, easy to access from anywhere I can literally get on now and troubleshoot. So I think it's just the ease of use, which is great.
It's very easy to deploy these devices because it's a cloud-based controlling controller that controls it. So able to, once the device has internet access, all you need to do basically is to look up the controller serial number and it'll basically find it. And once you add it to your network to automatically incorporate that device into your network and basically build the panels for the SD-WAN service.
So compared to the Cisco Catalyst series, there isn't that many dolls you can turn and just optimize stuff. So particularly I'm not quite sure around how stuff like MACsec would work on the MS. It's something that I've really got to look into more and the documentation isn't really that obvious for that feature.
At the time I am writing this, Meraki MS has conver all of the required needs. Is really easy to implement, the dashboard helps a lot with the implementation and troubleshooting process, the devices are very robust and you can count with the meraki support in case you face a physical or logical issue with them.
The simplicity and ease of use for the Meraki Dashboard make it an easy choice for our organization to renew our Meraki Enterprise Agreement. We will likely continue using the Meraki MC67-C, MX450, and other MX models in their catalog until we shift away from Meraki completely
The Meraki dashboard is one of the most intuitive and user-friendly network management interfaces available. It simplifies many traditionally complex tasks, such as VLAN configuration, port management, and firmware updates, making it easy to deploy and manage networks without extensive CLI work. Features like zero-touch provisioning, remote troubleshooting, and real-time monitoring significantly reduce the time and effort needed for network administration. The reason it’s not a perfect 10 is that while Meraki is great for most standard networking tasks, it can feel somewhat limiting for advanced configurations. Additionally, the reliance on the cloud dashboard means there’s very little local management option, which could be a drawback in environments with strict compliance requirements. Overall, it’s one of the easiest networking solutions to work with, but power users might find certain advanced features lacking.
Some features simply aren't there, but the ones that are there are pretty easy to use. Sometimes it is easy to get lost when trying to find the specific device you want to work on, but that's mostly due to how rarely we have to go into the interface.
Cisco Meraki MS switches are quite reliable, robust, and incredibly rare to experience failures. Most of the time, as with all equipment, problems arise from incorrect configurations, not from poor performance of the equipment itself. In any case, when a hardware or software issue arises, Meraki support responds promptly, and if equipment replacement is required, the service is dispatched quickly and efficiently.
Meraki MX devices support high availability (HA) configurations, which ensures minimal downtime if one device goes offline. This feature has helped us maintain a stable and reliable network, even in cases of hardware failures. ince Meraki is cloud-managed, we've noticed that the cloud infrastructure is generally highly reliable, with minimal service interruptions or downtime. This makes it easier to manage the network remotely without significant availability concerns. Meraki automatically pushes firmware updates and patches, which helps maintain system stability without requiring manual intervention. These updates are rolled out in a manner that ensures minimal disruption to service.
In deployments using Cisco Meraki switches, no issues with performance, slowness, or loss have been reported; overall, performance is quite good. Communication and integration with other devices and brands is quite good, and the devices rarely fail.
The interface is pretty responsive. The lower end devices are easy to overwhelm if you have a lot of throughput. Be sure the model you get is rated for the amount of traffic you will have. Overbuild if possible, otherwise you won't be fully leveraging the connection from your ISP.
Meraki support is excellent. They are also highly proactive. They literally replaced all of a particular model of our MS switches when it was discovered that they were not sure about the longevity of a particular chassis fan inside those switches. Without us having to do anything other than ask, they shipped us all new replacements (with a better fan in them) for the 10 or so of the switches that were in the affected model group, and we shipped the defective ones back to them int he same packaging, prepaid. None of the recalled switches had ever experienced a fan failure, but they were not willing to let them run in a production environment. I like that. Meraki MS support staff are also quick to get back to you and very knowledgeable about their product. I actually contact our Meraki rep to instigate a support case (although i could call support directly), and he gets the details from me first, then opens the ticket for us and explains it to support. This means that I only even need to talk to one person, and I like that, too. Meraki MS switches are designed to be essentially "plug and play", so support is generally not needed unless the end user is not following the deployment and operation guides
I haven't ever had a bad experience with Meraki support. On the few occasions where I wasn't understanding the UI or needed some clarification about what a setting actually would do, I contacted them and they were very quickly able to provide help. Returns are simple and fast, too. We had to return a defective device one time and they shipped the replacement before we had even un-racked the one that was faulty. Unlike many other vendors, they didn't ask use to a do long list of scripted diagnostics, they just took my word for it that the device was broken and sent out a replacement immediately
The In-person trainings are very useful because allow you to ask questions in live to the instructor. In general, most training sessions have been delivered directly through the Meraki platform with on-demand videos. However, having a dedicated instructor has allowed us to address specific topics that in some cases aren't covered in depth in the courses.
great when they offered it, really tested your knowledge with hands on and see what your peers from other orgs know. glad to see that we were ahead of the curve of what our peers knew
The Cisco Meraki learning platform is very user-friendly and offers all kinds of videos, reading material, and forums related to the different courses. There are courses for specific topics and also dedicated learning paths for certifications. In both cases, the content and explanation are easy to understand and provide highly didactic examples, sample equipment configurations, and quizzes at the end of each lesson to assess the acquired knowledge.
In general, the implementation process was relatively simple, given that we already have a relationship with the partners and experience in other implementations, from the acquisition of licenses, purchase of equipment, configuration of switches and support from the Meraki team, everything has been easy to manage and the support from both the partner and the Meraki team has been excellent.
Implementing Meraki MX devices in phases—starting with a pilot group or select branch offices—was invaluable. This allowed us to identify potential configuration issues, troubleshoot problems, and refine our setup before rolling it out company-wide. It also helped to get feedback from early users and adjust the deployment strategy accordingly. The SD-WAN capabilities in Meraki MX were essential for optimizing our WAN traffic and ensuring better application performance across various locations.
Catalyst is good but it requires CLI configuration which can be very complex for beginners because they tend to forget commands. Cisco Meraki MS takes out the complexity by having a GUI, and another advantage is the risk of committing bad configuration is minimized (such as typing a typo in a long command for a vlan or IP address). The GUI's just a lot cleaner to work with.
The Meraki Dashboard has been a lot more intuitive than CradlePoint NetCloud. We switched from CradlePoint to Cisco Meraki MX because we were already familiar with the interface which allowed us to be familiar with a single dashboard.
I would say probably eight. I think there's a lot of, the scalability is very nice and I've definitely deployed a lot of sites quickly. I think for us right now that we have to pivot away from manual configurations and using automated configurations. And so just being sure we prevent things like drift between sites is kind of important right now for us. And so I think that's the next steps for us in that product. And so I think if there was better documentation or better best practices about how to automate and deploy standardized, I think that would help.
I think at an organization level it's definitely a 10. You can automate when you're going to upgrade. You can do it on a peer network basis. There might be issues around scalability if things get a bit too complicated, but if you keep it simple and stupid is my examples of a retail store with an fpos machine, you're going to be fine.
I can't think of any negatives. Positive, well, I had nothing but positive things to say about it. Like I said, multiple times. Of course it does give us so much visibility, which is important to us. As far as on a daily basis, I mean the dashboard daily of course, and the use of the phone. It's just also they keep innovating and adding new features to it, which help us lower our troubleshooting times and uptime. And just the overall use of the product itself.
I'm going to say positive impact. The biggest thing is especially coming from having a third party taking care of our network to us doing it ourselves. The ease of this with the overall high level visual that we can get as to how our day is starting and running reports to see how many outages have we had, what areas have they actually been in running these reports and being able to gather if it's a certain service provider that's causing an issue in a general area, maybe we need to switch service providers for ISP. So it's been great in that mannerism for us. Ease of manage, I mean, we have a limited number of staff, we have a lot of different offices across the country. And then this is relatively new for us because we did have a previous provider doing all of this for us.
