Cisco Meraki Smart Cameras ( MV) are presented by the vendor as simple to deploy, configure, and manage; they state MV provides reliable security and valuable business insights to organizations of any scale.
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pfSense
Score8.5 out of 10
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pfSense is a firewall and load management product available through the open source pfSense Community Edition, as well as a the licensed edition, pfSense Plus (formerly known as pfSense Enterprise). The solution provides combined firewall, VPN, and router functionality, and can be deployed through the cloud (AWS or Azure), or on-premises with a Netgate appliance. It as scalable capacities, with functionality for SMBs. As a firewall, pfSense offers Stateful packet inspection, concurrent…
Cisco Meraki MV is always my first choice when recommending camera solutions and networking products. Having a reliable, aesthetically pleasing design, and great video quality heavy product was a must for our environment. What we needed could not be found in competitors, and the reputation of Cisco Meraki MV made the choice a simple one.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I would it is best solution in the market but it would be awesome to have it integrated with badging system and when someone comes near the door, Cisco Meraki MV takes a pic and runs an algorithm at the backend to check if it employee or not if it is automatically open the door
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The Cisco Meraki MV equipment and solution is one of the equipment that we have bought, setup, configured that is requiring minimal maintenance. It may cost more in subscriptions but it basically pays off by not requiring attention or work done by any of my techs. Easy to use and it just work.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Very simple to use and set up. Just plug in the camera to a PoE enabled switch port that has a DHCP server behind it, add it to a network in the dashboard and you will start seeing the video feed. It takes longer to type this than to do the configuration
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The Cisco Meraki support team is very responsive and they escalate quickly within the team to find people who have the required knowledge. It can take a while to get things fixed if firmware of software changes are needed, but they keep in touch and do get there. The Cisco Meraki community is another excellent source of assistance and helped me when we initially used Meraki MV cameras.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We liked Meraki MVs because we could add them to our existing Meraki network and have a single pane of glass for managing the network and security. We also like the ease of use and cost of the Meraki solutions. There are various other solutions on the market, but for our team Meraki makes the most sense.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.
I don't even know if there is a limit to Meraki product's scalability! We can group so many campus[es], offices, [and] organizations under the same cloud based dashboard that I don't even know what is the maximum devices count...if there is one. For our customers and us, it has never been an issue
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Positive: Takes less time to review footage as the AI motion search allows for our customers to not have to wander through footage.
Positive: All in one software with the security cameras has let one of our customers increase their ROI but $10,000 annually as they no longer have to purchase separate monitoring software for security, it's all integrated.
If you're looking to save money out of the gate, this could technically be a negative impact as this solution does cost a little bit to get going with the cameras and the licenses, but they are multi year licenses (Which include support) that allow for you to incorporate your security for 3, 5 , 7 or 10 years into the future.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
