I have a new avatar! I've changed from cartoon cat to real big cat. ... View more

MX64's firewall throughput is 250Mbps. If all 500 users makes traffic more than 200Mbps(80% of maximum capacity of MX64), you can get some slow down. Plus, recommended client number of MX64 isa 50. So 500 users can be quite heavy for MX64 alone. ... View more

[ Hardware ] - According to this documentation, each MR AP can hold up to 128 client theoretically. So, I assume that real-world value is 80% of theoretical one, therefore each MR will hold up to 100 clients. Then, we need at least 6 MR APs. - I'll take MR53 because of 4x4x4 MIMO and Multigigabit uplink.   [ Placement ] - I'll put 6 AP's evenly on the ceiling. Height of ballroom is 14' (approx. 4.3 meters). It's just about 2 stories, not too crazy high to mount APs. - Plus, if APs are mounted on ceiling, no need to rearrange APs when there are layout changes.   [ Features ]  * Monitoring * - Clients : Most basic, but most powerful feature of Meraki dashboard. Since there are only MR's in network, every clients are wireless clients. Using Clients dashboard, you can check how many client are connected to network now, how many clients were connected last few days, and even which AP is most popular(have most associated clients) one. In addition, you can check which and how much traffic is used by applications. - Map & floor plans/Location Heatmap : I think this is one of the most nice feature of Meraki wireless. Add ballroom's floor plan to dashboard, and arrange APs on them. And set markers to 'Current clients', because it'll give you insight about current attendance status. Plus, you can use 'Clients for past day' and 'Usage for past day' to check last day's attendance status. - Wireless Health : This page can give you about overall status of wireless network - how many clients are using now, how many users are suffering wireless problems, etc. - Bluetooth beacon : Enabling Bluetooth scanning and beacon, you can track clients via BLE, and it'll give you how many attendees in ballroom. You can use it to push conference information to them, too!   * Performance * - Radio settings : Create new RF profiles based on "Auditorium Profile" because even it's separated into four rooms, it's basically one large auditorium. It'll limit coverage area per AP to avoid signal collisions, and that's good for wireless performance. - Traffic shaping : Limit Per-client bandwidth. As far as it's not related to traffic-intense job, 2~5Mbps per client is usable for Web browsing and messaging. It can prevent bandwidth shortage when number of user is increasing. Plus, if some client need more network power, just add it to whitelist to exclude it from shaping policy. ... View more

Ah, it was really hellhole when I got assigned my first customers.   One of them was middle-sized enterprise with several factories and about 20~30 branch sites. They used Juniper as site UTM and Cisco for rest of network infrastructure. Cisco devices were kinda tolerable (although sometimes got encountered really obsolete device such as C1924F with MTRJ fiber connector), but real pain in the rear was Juniper UTM. They made IPSec VPN between Cisco ASA as center and Juniper as site, and it keeps losing VPN connection time to time, even though they have same configuration, some sites works but others have problem, and troubleshooting is next to impossible. (Especially Juniper SSG's snoop feature is unusable. I really hate it.) And for addition, end user keeps attaching network devices without any permission or notice for their convenience, network topology was almost out of my hand.   It seems bad, but another one of my first customer was event worse. At that time, They were using Nortel VPN as site and client VPN! They were so old, therefore hardware keeps failing time to time, and failure rate is goes quite high at summer. Client VPN was malfunctioning with wireless network, and didn't support latest Windows at all. Plus, they were using obsolete 3Com switches. For management aspect, 3Com's switch firmware is too simple that have very few features, and it makes troubleshooting more complicated. And shockingly, some of sites were still using 10Base-T switches in 21st century! You're not misread - 10Base-T switches! Someday, even one of end user called me and said "Network switch makes weird and loud noise, and seems it can be blow up anytime. Is this OK?"   So, before I met Meraki, it was really pain in the butt to manage uncontrollable site networks; unmanageable end users, obsolete devices, too simple to gather data, too complicate to change configurations, and it goes on and on.   It's really luck to meet Meraki now! ... View more

Few days ago -precisely, this Monday- almost all of my customer network's Internet utilization got really high. Really, really high. At first, backbone team used Netflow to find cause. Export Internet gateway switch's Netflow data into ELK stack, but it doesn't give useful results. But, then, my supervisor checked one of customer's site network which has installed Meraki MX device. That site is routing all of it's traffic(including Internet) into datacenter's Meraki MX device via S2S VPN. When he checked Client page in dashboard, and voila! We can find cause of high traffic usage.   According to dashboard's client application statistics, Adobe and Microsoft update URL were eating quite amount of traffics. Because Meraki Dashboard shows exact URL, we can conclude that cause of high utilization is due to Adobe Acrobat Reader and Windows updates. (It was after 4-day holidays.) My boss got very impressed about Meraki's Traffic Analytics feature, so he ordered to my supervisor to test and buy more Meraki devices 🙂 Plus, we got another appealing point to customers to get Meraki solution. ... View more