Cisco Meraki SD-WAN is a software-defined WAN offering transport independence, application optimization, intelligent path control, and secure connectivity.
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Cisco Routers
Score 8.8 out of 10
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Cisco routers support secure, reliable enterprise connections. These enterprise routers help users implement an intent-based, future-ready WAN that is constantly learning, adapting, and protecting. Deploy routers for the branch, cloud, co-location, or the data center with any type of connectivity, including MPLS, Internet, and 4G LTE. With over 30 years of experience and an end-to-end portfolio, Cisco routing solutions can deliver for today’s networking needs. The vendor promises to help…
So well suited, if you look at operations that have say sorry, facilities or locations that have around up to around a thousand employees or like some of our diverse manufacturing facilities that have smaller amounts of bandwidth that have high uptime requirements, the system is very flexible with regards to how fault tolerance is addressed, how redundancy is built that allows us to accommodate those needs. It has some nice built-in security features that allow us also to be able to adapt to different conditions. The problem we struggle with it the same time though, is that when you activate some of those other more feature capabilities, the throughput of the platform begins to drop fairly significantly. So if you add too many security features or too many other features onto it, you try to put in a bigger and bigger device in order to accommodate the same amount of throughput that you need. And, what happens then is that the overall cost now becomes prohibitive and it's no longer desirable to be deployed. There are other options that are better. The other side is that when you pass a certain amount of total throughput, so if we have campuses or larger locations that may have 5,000, 6,000 employees at them the size of the device, again, that's needed to be able to do that becomes cost prohibitive to do it. So again, that benefit that we're looking for, it seems to have a sweet spot, right? That's like between 10 megabits and one gigabit. And we don't really seem to have a good solution in the platform to address some of the other ones for us right now. Thankfully, those level of ones are very small. We don't have that many occurrences of really high throughput requirements, but we do see that in the future growing. So we're certainly looking for options for how to address those.
Cisco has a very easy CLI and most importantly it is known to most network engineers. There is a huge possibility that Cisco solutions are available over the Internet for a particular problem or a use case. Cisco has been improving ever since, however, Cisco can improve in areas such as rollback or error checking mechanism during the configuration, Juniper Networks Routers has done a great job in this area. Cisco is well suited for enterprise environments, however, for Service Provider Networks there are many options available.
The core of the product itself architectural-wise is designed very well for scale. So from the backend, for example, the ability to support a large number of diversified locations and a flexibility in on topology and how those can be deployed.
Bosch has a very complex kind of a deployment where how its remote sites around the world are connected. We have well over 1200 locations in our wholly-owned operations. And those are deployed in regions, I mean, literally all around the world. So for us to be able to be flexible in how the topology of those sites are deployed was fairly significant.
Cisco routers offer networks for the WAN, the LAN and the cloud include advanced analytics, optimization security incorporated with them you can have a comprehensive and proven solution.
They are well designed to support coherent optics to drive the convergence of optical layers, as well as systems that offer lower power consumption
They are very reliable for networks that are constantly growing traffic with fixed or modular systems that allow handling large traffic flows
They are quite friendly and easy-to-use computers on their different platforms, whether ios, ios xe, XR
Software-defined radios could be used so that both the radios could be converted into 5 GHz model to provide enhanced connectivity in network congestion scenarios.
Support for low power IoT devices.
Should provide more details about devices connected to the access points such as the risk score of the devices.
Enhanced encryption algorithms and quick firmware upgrades.
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.
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.
Cisco routers are great and are the industry standard. They have proven their ability to last and [continually] provide support for their devices. You can go into a lot of IT closets and see old Cisco switches and routers. Why? because they are workhorses and they last. Their compatibility [with] other systems and hardware makes them hard to beat.
Because [Cisco] Meraki SD-WAN has fulfilled the required functionality with the easy deployment of the configuration of new sites and growth, in addition to one of the integrations that Meraki has in general as a platform and the centralized management of everything through a single Dashboard. [...] The best thing is that [Cisco] Meraki SD-WAN is included from the enterprise licensing of the MX.
