MX84 Cellular Failover

SOLVED
Chris_Carlyle
Conversationalist

MX84 Cellular Failover

I will be installing a pair of MX84s for a customer soon and there is interest on Cellular backup. How do I need to tackle this? Reading the docs, it seems pretty straight forward on getting the MX connected but had some questions as I have obviously never done cellular failover. Do I need to get with the carrier for the modem/SIM or is this something that I need to procure? Just looking for some guidance on how to tackle this since it is new to me.

 

Thanks in advance!

CCNA R&S, CCNA Security, CMNA
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Bruce
Kind of a big deal

For the cellular connection on the MX itself you’ll need a SIM and a USB modem to get going, you’ll probably get both of these from your carrier - and, yes, it’s pretty straightforward. However, the cellular USB connection doesn’t give you the same feature set as the full WAN ports (e.g. it doesn’t do SD-WAN) - it’s more to just maintain some sort of connectivity to the MX and site.

 

If by a pair of MX84s you mean an HA pair then just be aware that the cellular connectivity doesn’t kick in until all uplinks (across both MXs) have failed, so it really is a ‘last-resort’ type of thing.


There is a good document here that explains it, https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Cellular/3G%2F%2F4G_Cellular_Failover_with_USB_Modems, and also lists the USB modems Meraki have tested, but others work too.

 

If you’re wanting to use cellular as a more robust, second/redundant WAN link to the MX then you might actually want to look at the option of getting a MG21 and connecting it to the WAN2 of the MX. This will give you more of a ‘full-featured’ WAN link and also has the advantage that you can position the antenna away from the MX, towards the cell tower.

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2 REPLIES 2
Bruce
Kind of a big deal

For the cellular connection on the MX itself you’ll need a SIM and a USB modem to get going, you’ll probably get both of these from your carrier - and, yes, it’s pretty straightforward. However, the cellular USB connection doesn’t give you the same feature set as the full WAN ports (e.g. it doesn’t do SD-WAN) - it’s more to just maintain some sort of connectivity to the MX and site.

 

If by a pair of MX84s you mean an HA pair then just be aware that the cellular connectivity doesn’t kick in until all uplinks (across both MXs) have failed, so it really is a ‘last-resort’ type of thing.


There is a good document here that explains it, https://documentation.meraki.com/MX/Cellular/3G%2F%2F4G_Cellular_Failover_with_USB_Modems, and also lists the USB modems Meraki have tested, but others work too.

 

If you’re wanting to use cellular as a more robust, second/redundant WAN link to the MX then you might actually want to look at the option of getting a MG21 and connecting it to the WAN2 of the MX. This will give you more of a ‘full-featured’ WAN link and also has the advantage that you can position the antenna away from the MX, towards the cell tower.

Thank you Bruce for the insight.

CCNA R&S, CCNA Security, CMNA
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