Meraki SD-WAN Reviews

We mainly use Meraki SD-WAN for connecting sites.

The most valuable feature of Meraki SD-WAN is the Auto VPN.

Meraki SD-WAN could improve by adding wireless access time-scheduled and overall capabilities.

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

The price of Meraki SD-WAN could improve, it is expensive when compared to other solutions on the market, such as Aruba.

We have approximately 50 customers using this solution.

There is no comparison with a normal broadband connection versus one that is the dedicated connection that we have. We have saved a lot of money after deploying Cisco Meraki.

We have many businesses in geographical locations, and due to this, we need it in many different locations. It has become very easy for us to deploy these products. They claim that it is zero-touch configuration. That is true. Suppose if I want to deploy this product in Manila, I don't have to have this product in my hand in the wire and I don't need to go to Manila. It's not like that.

It can be delivered to them and as soon as they plug it we can push the configuration. That is the beauty of this SD-WAN technology that we have.

The solution is helping me, not only for side-to-side connectivity but also for defining different VLANs, different networks, between the firewalls. I can do firewalling between these networks.

I can manage it very well and in a very easy way. This is from the technical perspective.

After deploying Meraki, we have a drastic fitting on connectivity because before Cisco Meraki, we used to have a physical broadband internet connection and it is very, very expensive in Dubai.

The security firewall features that are embedded in the product is very good. The security, including the internal threat protection, the IPS, or the advanced threat admin, are very good. 

The hardware is okay as compared to any other product.

The advanced license is expensive. Part of the cost involved is high. If you are only a small or medium business, it may not be the best option. For branch divisions, yes. This is a very useful product and I don't have any problem with the CAPEX however, I have a problem with the OPEX as the OPEX part of the advanced license is quite expensive. 

We'd like features that provide more transparency when there are issues. Right now, it's hard to get clarity on problems. We need more visibility.

I've been using the solution for three years at this point.

The solution is quite stable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

It's scalable.

We might have a plan to extend to maybe a hundred percent more sites within 2021. Hopefully, within this year, we will add almost double the size that we have right now. Currently, we have a total of 1200 employees that will double to 2400 and they each have their own devices. There are other guest users as well. There might be 4000 unique devices that need coverage.

The technical support isn't always ideal. Occasionally, we are unable to understand what is happening. When we escalate the matter, the response that we get from Cisco is not satisfactory as sometimes they are depending on the log, and sometimes they are depending on what is connected to a device, for example, and any cascaded device connected to it. They will say that maybe it is because of the device that it's connected on. They seem to have difficulty pinpointing the issue at hand.

Before using Meraki, we had the 1900 series of Cisco, and before we were using it with a DMVPN. This was the technology that was there before. We've always used Cisco.

The initial setup is straightforward. However, it depends on how you are setting it up. There are companies that do a very basic setup, and with a basic setup, anyone can do it. Even if you are not a technical person you can do this. It's very, very easy with zero-touch configuration. 

That said, when it comes to full functionality, in our case, we are completely using all of the features. We're doing integrations and using authentication and group policies and the advanced treatment events, and firewall rules, as well as traffic shipping rules. All of these are different. It's a bit more of a complex process.

We're working with a DNS Umbrella. When it comes to that much functionality, it is not easy, actually. It's not a basic thing. You need some experts to do the installation configuration.

While they've made it pretty user-friendly, they've also made it in such a way that handicaps IT staff. YOu always have to escalate issues to Cisco to get it sorted.

Once you get over the first implementation and move to configuration, it's pretty easy.

YOu only need one person to handle the deployment process.

I tend to handle the implementation and configuration. I'm well-versed in Cisco. I don't need a consultant or integrator to assist me.

We are a customer and end-user.

We have an SD-WAN technology that works on Cisco Meraki with MX appliances. Then we have a core appliance, from Core/Distribution and edge. These are all HP routers.

We are using the latest version of the solution. We get automatic updates to the latest versions.

While the solution is on-premises, it can be managed on the cloud.

I would recommend the solution. I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

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.

Our use cases are mostly in the financial sector. 

The classifying of the applications, for example, has been a very useful feature. It helps in contract service, in traffic shaping, and in controlling the balancing between the links that they have over the internet. They have the intention of DI, the direct internet access, as the agencies on the remote side have direct internet access to be able to consume some applications in the cloud.

The product does have a variety of features we can work with.

There's a good balance between 4G and LTE. There are backups to keep the connection going. The MPLS link we had, for example, is just for a backup in case one of the two links goes down.

We have had some problems doing the implementation. We had to open a case with Cisco. The deployment was solved with Cisco's tech help. 

In terms of the applications, the policies that we configured didn't work as expected. However, Cisco's tech also helped us deal with this as well. 

Meraki has a limitation in the number of links that it can work. For example, in Cisco, we can work with many, many links if you link with Viptela, however, in Meraki, we just get to work with two links or a maximum number of three links including the LAN link. It was a problem. When clients need many links and you have just two links it's a problem.

I've worked with the solution for a while. I've done POCs with five or six different clients.

Technical support is quite helpful in general.

I have worked for the last 15 years, more or less, with Cisco. For the last eight years, I have worked with Cisco and Aruba, especially with Cisco in data center technologies, in SDN technologies like ACI, like SD-Access, or SD-WAN, for example. I have worked in design as well. For example, in the design of data centers, in the designs of WAN networks, LAN networks, and Wi-Fi networks.

I have experience with Cisco Viptela, and Cisco Meraki with the MX series, which I have basically worked with within Cisco Meraki.

In wireless, I have worked in Cisco with the Cisco Ethernet, for example, and in Meraki as well, and I have worked with the MR series in the Cisco in Meraki.

We implemented, for example, Meraki in eight places in a banking environment. We implemented the MX series and we did approach the provisioning that has the solution to develop the implementation in many places. We implemented it in more than 2,000 places - wherever they have services.

We struggled a bit with the implementation, however, we did reach out to Cisco and they were able to help us get back on track.

Cisco technical support did end up helping us with the implementation, however, we mostly did it ourselves. 

I work in a company that is a partner of Cisco and we sell the Cisco Meraki SD-WAN solution.

We have implementations both on-premises and in the cloud. 

I'd rate the solution a seven 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 implemented Meraki SD-WAN to replace our traditional WAN infrastructure, particularly for our email and messaging system (referred to as MLSP).

We have successfully transitioned to SD-WAN. So, it's primarily used for connecting our remote sites.

I like it because it works. Moreover, the solution is pretty easy to configure.

Meraki SD-WAN had trouble prioritizing traffic for VoIP calls, specifically for Microsoft Teams. They faced challenges for sometime when you set up QoS on Meraki's access points. There are profiles available for different services, such as Microsoft Teams, which effectively put all the rules in place for you. During their SD-WAN deployment, these profiles were not accessible to them. It's possible that Meraki has since introduced them. Therefore, having profiles for different services would be beneficial.

Meraki SD-WAN could make the license cheaper; the licenses cost a fortune.

I have been using Meraki SD-WAN for a year. 

We've had a few minor things where it's gone down, but it has been stable most of the time.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Meraki SD-WAN is pretty easy to scale. You just buy more devices; it is easy.

I rate the solution’ scalability a ten out of ten. We have about 150 users using this solution.

The customer support has been very good. The Cisco account manager named, Luke Brennan was really very helpful. If you ring him, he'll answer, and he'll tell you what you need to know. They are good.

The initial setup was pretty simple. We were able to do it in a day.

We did have an integrator to help while setting up.

We've got one person in the team doing the maintenance, although we have somebody else who knows quite well that we do lean on external parties quite heavily, a company called Lixcel. Overall, we have a team of two people for maintenance. 

The solution is expensive. I rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten, where one is expensive, and ten is cheap.

Overall, I rate the solution an 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.

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.