Congratulations to the winner of the topology challenge!

MeredithW
Meraki Alumni (Retired)

Thanks to everyone who entered our awful topology community challenge. As it turns out, this challenge only managed to elicit two entries — it looks like the topology was a bit too terrible to try and save (noted!). 

 

Those two entries, however, each offered excellent ideas for tackling this topology. @vassallon's entry proposed we "kill it with fire" and @PhilipDAth's entry proposed a series of prudent swaps and optimizations. 

 

After a brief period of deliberation, the Meraki panel of judges determined PhilipDAth's to be the superior entry!

 

The WinnerScreen Shot 2019-05-20 at 4.47.02 PM.png

Here's what our panel had to say:

 

Awesome topology! Definitely hit a lot of the major issues that were plaguing the original topology. The branches have been cleaned up to have a more appropriate amount of wireless APs. The HQ has been reorganized to be properly redundant and servers, phones, and APs have been properly sectioned off into their own redundant layers. All three sites are structured in a much more device efficient manner.

 

 

 

🎉Congratulations, PhiliDAth!!🎉

7 Comments
jdsilva
Kind of a big deal

Oh shoot. I actually forgot about this one 😞  Nice work @PhilipDAth !

BlakeRichardson
Kind of a big deal

I must admin I looked at it and decided my actual workload was busy enough with our own network changes. Congrats @PhilipDAth  

PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal

That was quite an involved challenge requiring a lot of knowledge about various Meraki products and their capabilities and network topology as well.

 

Thanks for the acknowledgement.

GuilhermeMacedo
Getting noticed

congrats @PhilipDAth 

SoCalRacer
Kind of a big deal

@PhilipDAth Nice job! I didn't get mine submitted, but we had very similar topology. Kind of interested why you left 8 MR55 at the branch office with 50 users. I had relocated the webserver to HQ along with the MR55 to be connected to the mGig switches and replaced the 8 at Branch 1 with 10 MR42.

 

Also interested in the unused MX84, couldn't it be swapped with the MX67W and then have the MX67W be a cold spare. Then move some MR18 over there for better wireless coverage/bandwidth?

PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal

I don't like mixing different WiFi technologies within a single site, especially if a client can see both the old and new technolgy at the same time.  I've had issues in the past with clients trying to connect to newer technology APs when the conditions are bad rather than using the older AP next to them.

 

So that precluded me from using the MR55's at HQ.   The MR55's should ideally be plugged into MGig switches.  So that precluded me from re-locating the MS355 switches.

 

The MR67W has an 802.11ac AP, while the MR18 is 802.11n.  So I preferred the newer technology.  So all of my sites had a minimum of 802.11ac.

 

I considered re-locating the web server, but I didn't know what it is for.  Sometimes if you are doing heavy data processing you want the data local to the site.  For example, I have a customer in the print industry.  Customers can upload files many hundreds of meagbytes.  They then transfer these to the local rasterisers and then to the local printers.

kYutobi
Kind of a big deal

@PhilipDAth🎉Congratulations!!🎉