SDWAN- MX pre-requsite questions for customer

[Amy]

Hello Team,

Need your support in getting the answer for the below mentioned queries. We need the answer basis on Meraki Technology as a recommendation to end customer apart from what standard rules Meraki has mentioned in its document.

• Any Pre-requisite ask (questions per configuration parameters respectively) from the customer when customer places the order for MX devices...do someone have this
• Its regarding SDWAN ( Dual uplinks on single MX)
• When should we recommend PBR or Performance based routing to customer
• What should be the recommendation for traffic type ( like Voice, Video and Data) in case we have one MPLS link and one internet as part of dual link
• Same what should we recommend to customer for traffic types ( Voice, Video or data) in case one of the link is 100 Mb and other is around 50 Mb for example.
• What should be the traffic shaping policies we should recommend for below cases :-
  • If both the uplinks are internet
  • If one uplink is internet and other is MPLS.

Thanks

[GiacomoS]

Hi Amy,

I'll try and respond to what I can from a personal experience perspective:

- This first question very much depends on what solution you are proposing to the customer. You need to ensure you scope the solution correctly depending on elements like the bandwidth size, the amount of people that are going to use the appliance  (e.g.: how many WiFi users, how many wired users?), requirements for integration with Active directory, how is the network segregated (VLANs), what type of VPNs, etc. If you already have a Meraki network with a security appliance, I think it's beneficial to go through each section and ask a question to the customer that is relevant in each section.

- We do support dual uplinks and 3G/4G failover on the entire current MX line

- Normally this is encouraged whenever you have performance sensitive applications, like credit cards transactions or voice and video systems or traffic that needs to be prioritised, in which case you would ensure that traffic is sent over the better performing link and send less important traffic (for example guest WiFi access) over the low performing link. 

- Again there's no right or wrong here either. If you have MPLS, you would normally send inter-site traffic over that link as the ISP should guarantee better performance. If you have, for example, a cloud voice solution you would want to send it out directly to the internet rather than through the MPLS and out of a centralised breakout. It very much depends on customer setup and requirements.

- Ensure that QoS is set up so you prioritise the traffic queues accordingly; if the two links are using the same media than there is no difference on which is going to be used for each type of traffic. If the media are different (e.g.: one is a fibre and the other an ADSL), you are likely going to suggest to use the fibre for voice and video traffic. 

- In these case:

-- Recommendations is going to be purely based on performance of the two links. Send more traffic (and more sensitive) over the better performing link and less over the less performing link.

-- As I noted previously, intersite traffic should be sent over the MPLS and the rest over the internet.

Hope this helps!

Giacomo

[Amy]

Thanks for the input.....