Gaming with Meraki in an Enterprise Environment

[BenjaminJ]

Hi everyone, I work for a non-profit that offers gaming services to guests. We use Meraki at our locations, but we ran into a problem. Meraki does not, and probably will never, support UPnP (at least from my understanding). The most common workaround I've seen is port forwarding, however I think that will add tons of administrative overhead. Some of our locations have 10+ consoles as well, so I'm not sure if port forwarding is even realistic at that scale. Has anyone had a similar situation or have any suggestions?

[DarrenOC]

You’re correct that UPnP isn’t currently supported:

https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Other_Topics/Universal_Plug_and_Play_(UPnP)_support

Could you physically separate the consoles via a DMZ and open your firewall accordingly 

[BenjaminJ]

I did consider that but wasn't quite sure. My thought was to get an extra static IP from the ISP and do a 1:1 NAT to a UPnP capable router that would host the consoles. But that seems like a problematic workaround to me as I'd still like to be able to track these clients in Meraki. Also, I've already thrown these clients into their own VLAN and tagged them with a special group policy that let's them bypass all outbound firewall rules. The problem is Xbox Live does peer-to-peer gaming for some things, and getting the inbound traffic to the right devices is difficult. Would a DMZ fix the inbound traffic issue? 

[Inderdeep]

@BenjaminJ : Apart from what @DarrenOC  says 

https://documentation.meraki.com/MR/Other_Topics/Frequently_Asked_Questions_regarding_Cisco_Meraki_A... 

[jbright]

You could also run the MX in passthrough mode.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Networks_and_Routing/Passthrough_Mode_on_the_MX_Security_Applian...

When in passthrough mode, the MX is best used for in-line:

Layer 3/7 firewall rules, traffic shaping, and analysis
Network asset discovery and reporting
Intrusion detection
Security and content filtering

Something to think about...

[CptnCrnch]

Yes, it definitely is (if used correctly)!

[GermanChambers]

If your non-profit organization is using Meraki at your locations, and you're looking for a way to support UPnP for gaming services without using port forwarding, you may want to consider using a third-party solution such as a UPnP proxy or gateway. A UPnP proxy is a server or software that runs on a computer on the same network as the gaming devices and acts as a bridge between the devices and the router.