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.
None. No. Historically we weren't even monitoring our own networks. We were actually using a third party. So this is our corporation's first time actually taking care of our own network.
We're really using the Meraki more and more, everything from the wireless. We started doing some work with the cameras and security. Meraki has been a great product for our company so far. We use it for a lot of our outer campuses as the VPN Tunneling primary with SD wan. So …
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.
Cisco Meraki full stack is the best way to monitoring your network.
Troubleshooting is more easy, more graphical and easy to use. i like the topology view, the wireless healt, airmarshall … the advanced thread protection and the security center…
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.
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
So, other products that I've used in the firewall world that are kind of equal to this is traditional Cisco ASA, I've used SonicWall firewalls and Sophos firewalls as well. As far as how they stack up each really has its place a lot of the time when it comes to customer …
I think this one, especially for our use case, it's much more economical than the other ones were, it met the needs, our main needs for, our main requirements. There are use cases where the other ones are going to be better, they have more features. They're also more costlier, …
The MX platform is definitely suited. It seems to be best at the branch locations under a thousand users or so. And then at the data centers, it's been a little bit of a complicated process involving the full stack of the Meraki switches firewall security appliances. It gets a little more difficult within the data centers because the routing protocols aren't built out fully. They're working on, they're adding new features to that. But right now we're still struggling with a little bit of the features that are available within our data centers.
I'm very happy with their analytics now with the tie in with Thousandeyes, it's been really great insight. We now are SD wan, so insight's been really good. So as you know, everyone blames the network and having that kind of analytics from a single pane glass has been wonderful.
So I think that what we've noticed is the template, and I don't actually configure the Meraki, so that's done by our network team that works under me. But what I'm getting from some of the feedback is that with the Meraki we're a little bit limited into the template as to what we can set up for each template individually. And I'm kind of getting that it has to be based on region, it's not really what we want. So we end up with different templates that we have right now that aren't quite meeting our needs. I don't know if a newer version of Meraki might have that issue addressed already, but I find the template isn't as diverse as what I would like it to be.
As we have it in place now, we will continue to keep it at our remote sites. Future expansion is something we are reviewing, and may well start with some of the larger switches as they seem to offer good performance and management at a reasonable price. Wireless is also something we're investing in and their devices are great for that.
The Cisco Meraki MX series is very easy to use. Setting up user VPN access, site to site VPN to tie multiple locations together and managing all your devices. You can even download the latest firmware and install without ever leaving the dashboard. Meraki is the very definition of easy to use
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
We're really using the Meraki more and more, everything from the wireless. We started doing some work with the cameras and security. Meraki has been a great product for our company so far. We use it for a lot of our outer campuses as the VPN Tunneling primary with SD wan. So it's working out very well for us.
The Cisco Meraki MX is basically a good product, but not perfect. If you compare the Cisco Meraki MX with a Fortigate or Cisco Firepower, you quickly realize that this system can do less than the reference product. The Cisco Meraki MX can be used in small environments, but in large environments you have to check carefully whether it really makes sense to use it.