UPDATE: Submissions have ended and we have a winner!
It’s time for another Community Challenge! For this challenge, you’ll imagine yourself as a fresh-faced, newly-hired IT Specialist with a hot-topology-mess on your hands. Give us the best fix and win yourself a totally rad new Meraki skateboard!
Picture this: you've recently been hired at Generic Company LLC. On your first day, you take a peek at the company’s high-level network topology:
As I'm sure you can see, it's quite a mess. The goal of this challenge is to fix / improve the topology to be more in line with what you think are best practices. Some rules / guidelines:
- You are limited to only the devices shown as already installed, and the devices in the spare inventory.
- You can move any device to any location and cable it wherever you see fit.
- You cannot buy any additional networking hardware, but you can add additional connections between sites and hardware if you want to.
- Do not worry about the subnetting or routing setup between the sites; focus on how the hardware is deployed and cabled with each other. We're looking to clean this up at the highest conceptual level possible. We can assume that through some miracle the routing and subnetting is configured to allow the sites to communicate before and after the cleanup.
How to enter
Make the changes you see fit to best improve the topology in Lucid Chart (requires login; if you don’t already have a Lucid Chart account, you can create one for free). In order to edit, you will need to go to "File" and "Make a Copy." Once you've made your edits, take a screenshot or download your file as a PNG. Upload the image and add any commentary about your changes in a comment on this blog post before 11 a.m. PST on Monday, May 20th (05/20/2019). After you submit your entry, you’ll see a message reading “Your post will appear as soon as it is approved.”
How to win
Judging begins when submissions close (at 11 a.m. PST on 05/20/2019), and the winner will be announced at 11 a.m. PST on Thursday, May 23rd (05/23/2019).
We will be selecting only 1 winner:
- The Meraki Favorite — a panel of experts here at Meraki will select the Meraki Favorite prize, judging entries on efficiency, completeness, and accuracy.
The winner will receive a Meraki skateboard!
*Gnome shown for scale
Complete rules and eligibility can be found here.
