1. Home
  2. Ethernet Switches
  3. Cisco Meraki MS Reviews
  4. User Review of Cisco Meraki MS
Brilliant platform for fast deployment of simple scenarios
December 06, 2023

Brilliant platform for fast deployment of simple scenarios

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • MS120-8LP
  • MS120-8FP
  • MS125-24P
  • MS125-48LP
  • MS225-24P
  • MS225-48LP
  • MS425-16

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Meraki MS

We typically use Cisco Meraki MS switching for most of our remote sites where connectivity requirements are relatively simple and locations are very remote. Meraki Dashboard allows us to provision new hardware using existing onsite resources (technical, but non-IT people, like electricians, mechanics, etc.) and avoid costly technician deployments. The ease of consumption of telemetry in Dashboard allows non-networking IT teams and site management personnel to understand usage patterns and real time issues without having to engage support teams and without being overwhelmed by technical detail.
  • Traffic accounting, patterns, visualisation
  • Ease of deployment
  • Simplicity of management (e.g. automated updates)
  • Lack of detailed troubleshooting information (e.g. failures to find a path to internet)
  • Limited port security options
  • Limited optical performance information

Do you think Cisco Meraki MS delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Meraki MS's feature set?

No

Did Cisco Meraki MS live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Cisco Meraki MS go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Meraki MS again?

Yes

  • Reduction in technician deployment costs
  • Faster time to resolution of faults
  • Greater visibility to non-networking staff and customers
Being able to deploy hardware without an accompanying technician and leveraging onsite staff has saved time and money, as hardware can be shipped without waiting for a technician to become available. Simple changes, such as VLAN changes, are now able to be actioned by service desk resources instead of network resources, and the visibility allows other teams, such as infrastructure teams, to troubleshoot their own issues without immediate network involvement - this greatly improves Mean Time to Network Innocence.
Having a consistent Cisco Meraki LAN allows for easy correlation of logs and events between device types and access methods. Devices are more easily traceable on the wired network and mobile devices are easier to track as they roam between locations. Clients that move between wired and wireless connectivity are tracked by hostname to give a full picture of their activity, rather than their wired and wireless sessions being treated separately.
While our deployment does not generally require great scalability, the product supports features such as stacking, link aggregation, and a robust API that allows for programmatic deployment of many devices at once.
Cisco Meraki MS is brilliant in very simple environments where basic segregation is required. Many features are pre-configured as defaults and this makes it easy to configure security and stability features like STP protections and UDLD. It is capable of some more complex functions, such as dot1x authentication. TAC support is easy to access and usually timely. Bundling support into the license and making it available through Dashboard is great.

We have had issues monitoring the Cisco Meraki Dashboard using legacy SNMP based system - this means we now effectively have one more network monitoring screen to watch. We also sorely lack an ageing timer for stick MAC address port security - essential in uncontrolled locations with no NAC available. We have also had issues with devices pulling DHCP leasing from the wrong VLAN on initial provisioning and then struggling to transition to our management VLAN when the full config is pulled.