I found out about Meraki while I was working at SHI as an Inside Sales Engineer. To be completely honestly when I initially saw logo and heard their name I thought they were both a little goofy, but the joke ended right then & there because Meraki Networking Gear is seriously AMAZING.
Meraki has several offerings, and will even give away FREE networking gear simply for attending one of their webinars.
I was able to get my hands on the following for FREE SIMPLY BY ATTENDING a webinar for each corresponding product:
- Meraki MX64 Security Appliance
- Meraki MS220-8P Switch
- Meraki MR24 WAP
When you get/purchase new Meraki networking hardware you will need to IMMEDIATELY add it to your network! The reason for this is because the license that goes along with the hardware starts immediately and depending on the number of years you purchased OR received from the FREE promo webinar. Trust me because I made this mistake when I received my FREE Meraki Networking Gear when I worked at SHI (2012)… I left it in the box for 2.5 years, and when I finally hooked it all up I realized I missed out on the majority of the cloud license. Luckily I was able to get another set similar to the one I had through the FREE webinars.
What differentiates Meraki from its competitors is the fact they are completely cloud driven. You can make any & all networking adjustments from your/any web browser.
Here is the Meraki Dashboard:
After initially logging in you are presented with your Network Clients, which shows network utilization in a pretty graphical format. You are able to drill-down into each network device to get more specific information about that specific network device.
If you wanted to get a more specific look at a particular client you can do so simply by clicking on their IP Address / Host-name and here is what you would see. It breaks down the traffic by application type, amount of traffic, usage percentage, and amount of time.