Do Gnomes use Meraki kit at home?

Uberseehandel
Kind of a big deal

Do Gnomes use Meraki kit at home?

Hi

 

The Meraki ethos and product portfolio is ideally suited to delivering solutions to domestic deployment. Many problems may be rectified without physical service calls, children's mobile devices may be configured and managed along with on-line usage monitoring, CCTV deployment and use is simple, telephone systems (no mobile signal, use a DID and an app on the mobile devices) can be seamlessly integrated, a number of silent devices which are mandatory in domestic and professional office deployments. There is a lot that is great.

 

But what's not to like?

 

Home environments are often stuffed with "smart" IoT-style kit that is abysmal as far as security goes, so it belongs on a VLAN of its own. It is easy enough to set this up, but sometimes even getting Chromecast to function when the streaming device is on a different VLAN to the mobile device attempting to set up the stream is impossible. Having Bonjour enabled did not help, although there are some superficial similarities in the two systems and the underlying protocols they rely upon.

 

Also, unfortunately, the MXs are not so keen on all the various flavours of multicast that are used by many multiplay ISPs and content providers. So an inability to handle a significant number of premium TV subscription services is telling. Sticking another router ahead of the MX to pass the TV feed directly to the switch (which is IGMPv3 capable) is a clumsy solution to the problem. It is very noticeable that budget-priced router manufacturers in East Asia have no difficulty in handling this type of multicast.

 

When google sent me the ports and protocols used by Chromecast, what immediately stood out was the use of multicast . . .

 

The consequences are that deployment in domestic situations is unnecessarily complicated and not capable of remote management.

 

Further, there are a number of major telcos that are also managed services providers, whilst they are attracted to idea of Meraki based solutions, they will not become pervasive until a Meraki solution embraces all the products in their multiplay packages. No voice, no TV streaming are show stoppers.

 

So back to the subject of this post, what do the gnomes use at home? Has it never occurred to anybody to put their smart devides on a separate VLAN? Don't they use multicast subscription TV? How about using the telephones in most of the world?

 

It seems that some opportunities are being missed, by all means be sceptical about domestic deployment, but the managed services market as addressed by major telcos is significant.

 

I would have thought if enough gnomes decided to mine the orc's gold themselves, all problems would disappear. 

Robin St.Clair | Principal, Caithness Analytics | @uberseehandel
4 REPLIES 4
DCooper
Meraki Alumni (Retired)
Meraki Alumni (Retired)

PIM-SM on the MX is coming to beta code soon. Stay tuned!


@DCooper wrote:
PIM-SM on the MX is coming to beta code soon. Stay tuned!

I've asked for the beta, so I'm waiting with interest. As soon as multicast enters the picture, there are as many different flavours as there are Gelati in an Italian ice cream cafe. In Europe and East Asia many content providers use a version of multicast that appears to be used less frequently in North America. So my fingers are crossed.

 

There is another smaller network kit maker (in San Jose) that recently upgraded their tiny "security gateway" device to handle what BT and DT use to stream their premium services. In this case, the firmware upgrade is described as an IGMP Proxy (server) - which could be a way of describing PIM-SM, or . . . I would have thought there were lots of Meraki folk who watch Champions League, Premier League and the Bundesliga here in Europe in 4K UHD which means, at least in the UK, the BT flavour of multicast is used.

 

I am also given to understand that there is a product announcement in about two weeks . . .

 

Cheers

 

Robin St.Clair | Principal, Caithness Analytics | @uberseehandel
DCooper
Meraki Alumni (Retired)
Meraki Alumni (Retired)

Are you trying to say is there are different standards to route multicast? Not sure I follow

the statement.

 

IGMP-Proxy is a RFC standard just like PIM-SM.


@DCooper wrote:

Are you trying to say is there are different standards to route multicast? Not sure I follow

the statement.

 

IGMP-Proxy is a RFC standard just like PIM-SM.


Well, it took the Gin factory two months to decide that they could not do on their security device what what a cheap router from Taiwan can do as far as multicast is concerned. I spent a lot of time reading up on the topic and I got the feeling that few of the authors, despite being published by the house with the animals on the cover, really understood all that is involved as far as the way it is used by content providers who own their own networks.

 

It is more than PIM-Sparse Mode vs Dense Mode. Don't ask me to explain, when I returned the hardware, the vendor kindly bought the text books off me as well, so I can't look it up. Which actually saves all of us a head ache.

 

Robin St.Clair | Principal, Caithness Analytics | @uberseehandel
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