Which Appliance to use for VLAN

[Rod]

Hi everyone! I am new to the community. Full disclosure; I don't believe I have ever registered to a blog/community board in my past. This approach will be a first for me. 

I will keep my question very simple. I recently purchased the MX84 (router/security) and MS225 (switch) and am trying to identify which hardware should manage my VLAN's and DHCP. Looks like both are capable of handling the task. 

[NolanHerring]

I would recommend using the MX personally.

[Rod]

Thanks, Nolan. If you don't mind me asking, why would you recommend the MX over the switch? 

[Nick]

In that instance I would go for the MX as well.

Its easier to manage and control the setup, from the kit you have it seems that its likely you won't doing a lot of switching? Will there be heavy inter VLAN traffic?

Oh and welcome 🙂 I am normally the same, but this community is knowledgeable and friendly with a good sense of humour as well. So it can't be bad!

[BlakeRichardson · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the forums @Rod, as others have already mentioned the MX is your best option for setting up your VLANs and DHCP. My reasons for this are below but these are based on a small network if you are building a large L3 network I would suggest doing this on your core switch

1. You are less likely to reboot an MX unit than a switch which means DHCP leases aren't going to be affected.

2. If you add multiple switches you might not always have every VLAN going everywhere and having DHCP on a switch in this instance could get messy. 

3. Its easy to remember, the switches to the switching and the MX does your DHCP, VLANS and routing. 

As I said above though if your network is going to be a resonable sized network I would setup everything on a core switch. 

[PhilipDAth]

I would choose to use the MX if the inter-vlan bandwidth requirements are low.  If the intervlan-bandwidth requirements are high I would use the MS225.

[Nash]

@PhilipDAth's got the same logic my company uses. If there's not a lot of inter-VLAN talk, MX is fine. If there's a significant amount of traffic, L3 goes into the core switches.

[Rod]

Thanks, Nick...

You are correct. This will be my only physical switch. As for VLAN's, I have configured 4 thus far; 1st for our lab, 2nd for VoIP, 3rd for our office suite and the 4th for our Surveillance\DVR setup. I am planning on keeping all of my Meraki devices (router, switch & AP) on the default VLAN (1 - Lab) with static IP's assigned. Today's traffic is not so heavy, but the prediction is for volume to increase within months - hopefully : ) 

[Rod]

Thank you to everybody on this thread...your recommendations are steady. I took everyone’s advise and configured the MX to manage VLAN’s and DHCP. Very impressed with the support in this community. My network is not big by any means but I still have quite a bit of work ahead of me. I will definitely keep this community in mind for other potential roadblocks.