Cisco Meraki SD-WAN is a software-defined WAN offering transport independence, application optimization, intelligent path control, and secure connectivity.
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MikroTik Routers and Switches
Score 8.5 out of 10
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Latvian company MikroTik offers routers and switches.
[Cisco] Meraki SD-WAN is ideal for scenarios where rapid deployment of sites in SD-WAN is required. The Retail sector is an ideal case. A scenario where [Cisco] Meraki SD-WAN is not so appropriate is when it is required to apply a more specific segmentation in the networks to be shared and when it is necessary to apply quality of service policies in a more specific way.
MikroTik is suited for large companies that require advanced distributions in terms of contracted bandwidth, and in the same way, allows a single device to specify filtering and firewall rules without acquiring an additional device. There is a range for small companies which is more economical and less robust, but in case it's not necessary, such a strict control over the data consumption of the company is not a feasible solution.
Customized, esoteric configurations were very hard to get connected and configured.
We had hoped to configure all sites filtering in one place, but each site has to be configured separately. this is prohibitive with a large number of sites.
Network visibility does not work as well as I would like.
The MX appliances do not work well with voice VLAN when using the appliances as a small office router/switch.
Some of the wiki articles have not been updated or are not accurate enough. We spent a couple of days trying to find an example of implementing a mobile IPSec client solution. But once this has been implemented, it has been solid (always worked). A bigger community would help, and I am finding it hard to find the time to contribute to these articles.
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.
There is no SOC, NOC, where you can contact to try to resolve any difficulties. The problems that these devices have are solved largely through the community, with workaround alternatives, or if the support team responds to a request, the response times are too high for the current needs of technological communications.
We considered staying with MPLS over private circuits, but the cost was prohibitive. We also considered going with a more traditional VPN configuration using the ASA5500-X series for VPN head-end. The Meraki MX SD-WAN seemed a better all-around fit for a modern network.
Cisco Routers are one of the best in the market, however they are also very expensive and not suitable for a small deployment or any deployment which requires just a couple of routers. MikroTik on the other hand are less expensive and provides many features that you require for a small scale deployment. they fit in with the budget and do what you need them to.
Once your template is set up Meraki is easy to scale. Even creating the template is easy and I was able to learn enough in 4 hours to build, test, and deploy templates for our locations. Best part is you can stage your deployment by adding a unit to a template even before taking it out of the box.
