Meraki SD-WAN Reviews

I'm using Cisco Meraki, both for the firewall and software-defined network.  

For the time being, we are sort of picking out the best way to use it in terms of the number of licenses and what we actually need to be able to oversee and have control over — what we really need to do. We are still looking at what are the most essential parts and whether we should increase the number of licenses or just to keep what we already have at the moment. We are taking it step-by-step for now.  

In terms of the firewall, actually what I found most interesting was that the amount of information you can get from overseeing the system from a centralized place. For example, we know the way people logged in, when they logged out, and how they access work that is on individual computers. It provides a lot of information.  

So, basically the most valuable feature so far is just the information we can actually get from the system without actually having to go into every single device. You can just get it all from one point, gather all the information that would usually take you about up to 10 minutes per computer and get it almost instantly.  

In terms of Software Defined Networking, when our older firewall was used in the setup, it was a very different configuration of various computers. What we actually thought we had was sometimes outdated and possibly not being used at all in one or two cases. Using this product was a chance to find out where actually there are vulnerabilities in our system and which places need to be updated that had not been properly updated because they sort of fell between the cracks.  

Because I have not been using the product for very long, I'm really just learning it and being overwhelmed by the amount of information that I can actually get from the system. There is really nothing that I can think of at the moment that needs to be improved. I'm just really happy about basically everything. It might happen that something will become important sometime as we get more used to the product and we are able to look into it better. But for the moment it seems to cover everything we need.  

Possibly there may be more options for integration between computers, projectors, television — sort of being able to more easily make everything included in one solution. It would be even more useful.  

I have been using the product for more than two months.  

Our impressions of the stability of SD-WAN is good at this point. We have had no issues that I know of up until this moment.  Whether we will later on remains uncertain. For now  everything is stable and working well.

The scalability of the solution does not seem like it will be a problem.  

We have not had help directly from Cisco's technical support. We did have help once indirectly through another company that we used to help us to sort out our old system. That was two years ago and I was not personally involved.  

Actually, I'm only now comparing how this system works to our experience with the old system we used. That is not something I can do instantly. But the reason we chose this solution was to consolidate and make use of improved features.  

The initial setup for the product was straightforward and we had no issues. Our deployment took approximately only about two hours.  

We did use the help of a consultant who knew more about the implementation of the product, but in the end, it really was just writing down which plug went from where to where. That was sort of our biggest issue.  

We were satisfied working with the consultant as they did help the process. In the end, we were sure it was set up correctly.  

We went to a conference two years ago to start researching another solution like Fortinet  FortiGate. Meraki was the one that seemed to stand out more to me.  

My advice to other people considering this as a solution is that I would probably just recommend them the same server and set up that we have. It sort of depends on what the person or the business needs. There are questions about how much control over it that you want to have, how much you really need to be able to oversee everything, et cetera. In terms of security issues, I think it is wonderful to be able to actually see where the pitfalls of our infrastructure are and stuff like that. But my gut feeling is I think I would probably just recommend the same system as we have.  

But the problem with that is I also don't know how Fortinet works because I haven't tested and implemented it myself. It looked promising when we researched it two years ago. I don't know, maybe it is just as good as Meraki. From what I've seen from comparisons between the two, they seem to be similar in terms of usability and price. I could be mistaken about some of that. But I'm happy with what we have, so I can recommend our system as something that is working for us.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Meraki SD-WAN, Software Defined Networking as an eight given the fact that I've only been working on it this short of time.  

Meraki SD-WAN is a very good product as you get a backup for all the VPN and internet connections. You connect Meraki's cable, and you can have a secure port to deploy Meraki SD-WAN solution in the cloud, which is a very easy process to deploy. You can apply or make appliances for the other branches that you have, so it is easy to deploy Meraki in your network ecosystem.

Meraki can improve if it gets built in a way that provides network assistance. If Meraki obtains the technology to provide network assistance, then it can implement it manually in Meraki SD-WAN. With built-in network assistance, the tool will be one of the best tools in the market because its competitors are working on such a solution. I think if Meraki offers network assistance, it can improve in a much better manner.

I have experience using Meraki SD-WAN.

The technical support for the solution is very good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The difference between Fortinet and Meraki is in the area of pricing. FortiGate is cheaper than Meraki. FortiGate is a solution that is very similar to Meraki. Fortinet works on security, so it offers a few more features than Cisco Meraki. For example, Cisco Meraki has only two ports for doing the failover. FotiGate is available at a cheap price and has many ports to manage failover. Meraki only has two ports.

The product's initial setup phase is very easy.

One person can deploy the solution. People involved in the deployment of the product have CCNA certification.

The tool is plug-and-play in nature, so one who takes care of the product needs to have a basic knowledge of networking. Only those who have the basic knowledge can configure it and make policies in the Cisco Meraki platform.

The customer sees savings in the VPN area. If the customer has a VPN, they keep it along with the internet connection. The customers have Meraki SD-WAN, so they save by keeping the carrier's VPN solution. The VPN tool is more expensive than an internet connection.

The licensing is very easy to connect to the equipment. The tool offers term licenses. You have the same term licensing model available for all of your equipment, which is good for management. With other tools, the licensing models are similar to what Meraki offers. Meraki has many years of experience, so I prefer Meraki over the other products.

Meraki offers good pricing when compared to Fortinet and some of its competitors. The FortiGate and Cisco Meraki solutions have similar pricing.

I don't know how to explain how the tool's auto-VPN feature helps our company with operational efficiency.

I don't remember any issues with the VPN feature associated with Cisco Meraki.

When we tried integrating Meraki SD-WAN into our infrastructure, there were challenges. If the customer has another vendor's network, like an Aruba or Juniper network, the integration becomes complex because the engineer needs information about both the customer's network and the other vendor. The engineer needs to check if the configurations follow the same protocols, SSIDs, or VLANs.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We used Meraki SD-WAN for connectivity between our stores, primary data center, and service locations.

Meraki SD-WAN improved the way my company functions because it allowed quicker time to market for connectivity, efficacy, and security. It also contributed to better expense management in terms of not using dedicated services, instead utilizing more public cloud services to establish connectivity.

What I found most valuable in Meraki SD-WAN is its simplicity. I also like its manageability.

The only area for improvement in Meraki SD-WAN is its licensing model, as well as its cost structure.

I have three to four years of experience with Meraki SD-WAN, and I used it in the past year.

Meraki SD-WAN is a stable solution. It had well-managed updates that created a pretty stable and manageable environment overall.

Considering the number of locations where Meraki SD-WAN was used, I found it scalable.

I would rate Meraki SD-WAN technical support as four out of five.

Positive

We didn't use other solutions apart from Meraki SD-WAN.

Meraki SD-WAN had a straightforward setup.

I've seen ROI from Meraki SD-WAN.

I don't have information on the exact cost of Meraki SD-WAN, but I'd rate it a three out of five, just because the licensing model is very much associated with the Meraki solution. Meraki has its own pricing model.

Other solutions were evaluated, but I can't recall which ones off the top of my head.

Thousands of people used Meraki SD-WAN within the company. Meraki SD-WAN had a substantial deployment because the company I was in had quite a few locations. Hence, about fifteen to twenty people took care of the deployment, but to maintain and monitor Meraki SD-WAN, a minimum of two people would suffice.

There's no plan to increase Meraki SD-WAN usage because of the current economic conditions.

I'd recommend Meraki SD-WAN to others because it's easy to deploy and manage, but my advice is to be aware of the licensing and cost structure of Meraki SD-WAN.

My rating for Meraki SD-WAN is eight out of ten.

We are resellers. We provide solutions including Meraki SD-WAN to our clients.

I like the entire set of features and the analytics.

If you compare Meraki with other solutions, the level of security is minimal.

The security needs to be improved, which is why we also use FortiGate. Meraki offers the client basic security, it is not the same as what FortiGate is offering. The customers question the security as they see that they have some loopholes. They feel that a hacker can easily enter your data. When you operate the network to the family, on the outside a hacker can see the IP address inside the network.

Customers will request a firewall to protect the network.

I would like to see Meraki include firewall security. Also, they should have encryption inside the router to make the data secure.

I have been working with Meraki SD-WAN for more than three years.

We are using models MX64 and MX100.

So far it has been stable. We have no issues with stability.

Currently, we have 10 customers who each have 30 to 50 clients using Meraki SD-WAN.

Technical support is good.

When we have encountered problems, technical support has been quick to respond.

We are also working with Fortinet.

It is easier to deploy Meraki when you compare it with FortiGate.

Meraki SD-WAN is better suited for customers who have small branches, who don't have secure data to be transferred.

Meraki is not suitable for companies that require high security.

I would rate Meraki SD-WAN a six out of ten.

The advantage of Cisco Meraki is that they take the complexity out of the backend, they do it for you. One of the reasons that we switched to Meraki SD-WAN, was because they have a feature called Auto VPN.

I have to keep the operating systems on my switches and routers current and to do that with any other piece of equipment, would literally require me to download the newer operating system. I'd have to get a TFTP server setup to transfer that image over to the appliance. By the time I'd finish, even on the five sites that I have, that's five routers and seven switches.  A combined or aggregated downtime across the sites, potentially of six hours. Whereas now I can schedule the update for the middle of the night or anytime, and it happens on its own.

The portal updates and reboots the device and off it goes. I don't even have to be connected to do it, it just happens. That is of value to me that nobody else is promoting. Between the Auto VPN and the update of the operating systems to keep current, those are the key features.

The network insight and reporting are great.

There are literally things you cannot do in a graphical user interface that can be done from a command line. Certain commands that you can issue to any device from a command line are basically explicit; the same as a server or any other IP or any computer-related piece of hardware. If you can get to the command line, you can give it explicit instructions that basically tell it to do something that's hard to describe in a graphical environment. Periodically, there are some issues that you have to figure out how to work around.  That's a very technical thing, most people won't run into it. 

Six years.

Excellent.

The wide-area network side of the setup was pretty straightforward. I picked up some little details here and there that I wasn't aware of. I had been playing with their equipment for probably a year and a half to two years before I implemented it here. But not for wide-area networking.  With some assistance from Cisco Meraki, as soon as I added appliances, literally within 15 minutes, the site is meshed into the WAN.

Now, since rebuilding the WAN with Cisco Meraki, I keep a cold standby in the closet. All I have to literally do is go to the portal, assign the license to it, and tell it that this is going to replace a defective unit at another site.  I plug that device in, within 15 minutes it will take over. So I'm no longer dependent on an outside resource to get our network up and running again.

That's what's important to me. Is there better equipment out there that can handle more bandwidth and maybe do more things? Yes, but I do not have the bandwidth and may be losing other benefits.

The portal is hosted by Cisco Meraki, it's in their servers someplace. The way routers and firewalls typically are managed, is the way it's been done forever. The way the purists want to do it is via direct access to the unit. Going from unit to unit, configuring and troubleshooting, and doing all the magic. With Meraki, you cannot do an internal configuration from the unit directly. The advantage of this is that the configuration on the device is encrypted. Nobody can walk up to it and reconfigure it. Nobody can gain remote access into it and reconfigure it. So in my mind, the security profile on the unit is actually more secure.

But then, once the unit is installed and assigned to your organization, it's registered in the portal. From there you look at each device and define what it can do, which is the essence of software-defined networking. The portal allows you to configure security, connectivity and filters.  Changes in the portal are communicated to affected devices in a matter of minutes.

I don't know that it's cheaper, but for the Auto VPN and automated updating, it's a time saver for a smaller IT team.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Meraki SD-WAN a rating of ten — it's been working flawlessly for us.

We use it to provide our customers with a single dashboard for visibility, monitoring, and control across the networks. It makes it easy for us to integrate particular services with the customer's overall requirements.

The features of SD-WAN are very appealing because you have a centralized dashboard and multiple options to terminate. You have an internet leased line, which means that you can connect your broadband and 3G and 4G cellular networks on the same router. This makes it easy for us to manage everything on a single dashboard. That is, you can integrate multiple stacks in such a way that you do not have to maintain any other dashboard. You get single-pane-of-glass accessibility with Meraki.

Meraki is lagging behind in using a single pipe from service providers. That is, it would be good if they could use both the internet leased line and broadband connectivity.

In a future release, I would like to see integration with a security solution like Cisco Umbrella. This will give complete visibility on a single dashboard.

We started using this solution six months ago.

The data plane is installed on-premises, and the management plane is in the cloud.

It's very stable, and the overall cloud availability or management plan availability is almost 99.5%. It is absolutely awesome.

You can scale it at any level; there is no limit to the scalability. The best part is that it can be managed remotely. You do not have to send in an engineer. You just have to send the box to the customer, and they just have to plug it into the network. You can configure Meraki devices right from the workplace.

The technical support for this solution is absolutely superb. It's available 24/7. If our engineers are facing any issues, technical support is always available.

The replacement cycle is absolutely superb. Cisco support is globally number one, and I would give them a ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is very simple.

The price can vary depending on the challenges that you need to address. When you look at the stability and reliability against the price, you absolutely get the value for the price.

I would recommend Meraki SD-WAN to those who have multiple sites across several different geographical locations and to those who really want to connect their branch offices, their depos, their factories, etc.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Meraki SD-WAN at nine.

We primarily use the access points and switches for remote locations for a client. We have 100 or more remote offices, and we connect those together to a data center in Florida.

We like that it is cloud-enabled.

The solution is easy to use. It's so simple to set up and connect the connection points. We don't require any static IPs or anything like that on our ISPs. It's very quick and easy.

It is stable and reliable.

The solution can scale so long as you are scaling Meraki products together. 

It offers a very good "single pane of glass," which helps with management and visibility.

I don't have any notes for improvement. 

Technical support could be more knowledgeable and responsive. 

You do have to pay for the solution in perpetuity. 

I've used the solution for six or seven years. 

The stability is pretty good. I'd rate it an eight or nine out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is very scalable as long as it is a Meraki-to-Meraki environment. 

I'd rate the scalability eight out of ten. 

Technical support isn't the best. They aren't as responsive as we would like. The quality of the techs needs to be better. They need to be more knowledgeable. 

Neutral

The solution is very simple to set up, and we don't need any static IPs from our ISPs. This simplifies things. 

I'd give the ease of setup a ten out of ten. 

Meraki's a subscription service. You "pay forever," and in that sense, it can be a little expensive. That said, I'd rate it seven out of ten in terms of affordability. 

I'm a customer and end-user. 

Other than warning people that it is a subscription, this does offer a single pane of glass which makes it easy to manage if you have multiple sites.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We use Meraki SD-WAN for SD-WAN and WiFi.

The security could improve in Meraki SD-WAN.

I have been using Meraki SD-WAN for approximately three years.

The stability of Meraki SD-WAN is good.

Meraki SD-WAN is scalable.

We have approximately 5,000 people using this solution in my company.

The support that is provided by Meraki SD-WAN could be improved by providing help with security.

Meraki SD-WAN has an easy installation.

I would recommend this solution to others, it is very good.

I rate Meraki SD-WAN a nine out of ten.