Cisco Meraki Z3 Teleworker (discontinued) vs. Cisco Routers

The Cisco Meraki Z3 Teleworker appliance was ideal for scenarios where the remote worker spent the majority of their time remote. It alleviates the need for VPN software and gives the IT staff additional visibility into the connectivity of the user. We often encountered scenarios where the users broadband was having issues vs the Meraki network and the tools Meraki provides help to work through these scenarios. The case for the Meraki devices is not as strong for occasional users who cannot justify the cost of the appliance vs just logging in via VPN.

Incentivized

Cisco Routers, particularly ASRs, are well suited at the edge or perimeter of your network topology since they're capable of aggregating large data and performing fast packet processing. To be even more specific, they are great at handling full internet BGP route tables and aggregating multiple WAN connections. Some scenarios where they may be less appropriate might be for much smaller sites running less critical services that may not need "state of the art" enterprise routers.

Incentivized

• Easy setup for remote worker
• Versatility with WiFi and cable connections
• Safe to outages with dual wan setup

Incentivized

• Helps to separate routing information for different networks for different customers.
• Helps peers with service providers and Customer Networks and starts the exchange of information between them.
• Helps facilitate internet connectivity for enterprise networks.
• Helps transferring Internet or Private Data from one place to another.

Incentivized

• When Internet is lost and come back we need to reset the Z3 device from the dashboard in order to register the IP Phone to CUCM
• It would be nice to manage the Z3 device to a local web portal just for TS
• Max Speed 100Mbps. It would be nice if it could run up to 1GB

Incentivized

• It will be helpful if configuration can be done using a http GUI
• Graphical Visualizing provisioned VPN services will helps in troubleshooting
• Software upgrade process should have an automated way, that helps in managing large no of devices in the network

Incentivized

We are extremely likely to renew, as we have been very happy with our Cisco Routers for over 10 years. Their uptime as well as stable nature makes them ideal for us, as we are an industry that cannot afford downtime. We trust our partner to recommend our next model Cisco, when the time comes.

Incentivized

The best thing about Cisco products is their presence in community. When you have a problem you can do quick search and find whoever else had the same question and expert answer for that question. Other thing is there are Cisco certified people we can find very easily if want some help with comissioning these products

Incentivized

TAC has always been great for us. Once we enter a ticket, we escalate it to get someone on the phone. The issues is normally resolved within that first call.

Incentivized

At the time of implementation, we were not aware of a comparable product from Cisco or comparative vendor. We had initially deployed the Z1 appliance and had so much success that the transition to the Cisco Meraki Z3 Teleworker was a quick and easy fit for us. The device is easy to deploy and just works.

Incentivized

Other vendors definitely bring some great features. We've gone from Fortinet to HPE, to Ruckus. Each product has benefits to consider. For us, Cisco is a trusted brand that's used about thousands of customers and many fortune companies. While some of the newer or smaller players have great features, Cisco has most of the same plus time in the trenches.

Incentivized

The product is very scalable due to its implementation to the Meraki cloud and SD-WAN capabilities.

Incentivized

• Good visibility for IT team so we can monitor and validate the teleworker traffic
• Zero Touch Provisioning so we do not need to send a Engineer to configure it.
• Consumer-grade network security

Incentivized

• Network management has become easy and fast with cloud based portal.
• Network policies could be rolled out quickly across the devices.
• Improvement in Network security.
• Stable internet connection has lead to less downtime and more productivity.
• Stable internet connection in each location within the organization.

Incentivized