Cisco Meraki MX65W more than a firewall
The Cisco Meraki MX65W is an ideal security appliance for organizations with up to 50 network users.
It is a 250 Mbps Next generation security firewall that, unlike the MX65, includes 802.11ac/n WiFi and 12 × GbE (2 PoE+). These devices are 100% cloud-managed: installation and remote management are very simple and come with a comprehensive network services package, eliminating the need for multiple devices.
Interfaces 12 × GbE (2 PoE+)
802.11ac/n WiFi
USB 3G/4G
Firewall Throughput 250 Mbps
VPN Throughput 100 Mbps
Recommended Clients 50
Advantages over traditional firewalls:
- Centralized and simple management of all firewalls from a single administration portal. Managed 100% in the cloud, installation and remote administration are very simple.
- Traffic modeling and application management
- 3G / 4G Failover via USB modem
- Web caching
- Extremely simple and automated VPN management with no additional costs per user.
- Optimization of inter-site traffic with data compression, saving bandwidth and increasing speed.
- Prioritization of traffic by application to optimize Internet usage.
- Reports integrated into the management portal, without the need for additional installations.
- Proactive threat management.
Types of licensing:
There are two types of licensing in MX. The Enterprise and Advanced Security licenses, with options of 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10 years.
The table below shows a comparison between the two licenses:
| Feature | Enterprise license | Advanced Security license |
| Stateful firewall | ✔ | ✔ |
| VLAN to VLAN routing | ✔ | ✔ |
| Link bonding / failover | ✔ | ✔ |
| 3G / 4G failover | ✔ | ✔ |
| Traffic shaping / prioritization | ✔ | ✔ |
| Site-to-site VPN | ✔ | ✔ |
| VPN Client | ✔ | ✔ |
| MPLS to VPN Failover | ✔ | ✔ |
| Splash pages | ✔ | ✔ |
| Configuration templates | ✔ | ✔ |
| HTTP content caching | ✔ | ✔ |
| Group Policies | ✔ | ✔ |
| Client connectivity alerts | ✔ | ✔ |
| SD-WAN. WAN optimization | ✔ | ✔ |
| Geography based firewall rules | ✔ | |
| Intrusion detection / prevention | ✔ | |
| Content filtering | ✔ | |
| Anti-virus and anti-phishing | ✔ | |
| Youtube for Schools | ✔ | |
| Web Search Filtering | ✔ | |
| AMP / Anti-malware | ✔ |
Finally we focus on what we consider to be a good product for the SMB, MX65W with Advanced Security licensing and discuss the benefits:
- Next generation firewall, layer 7 “next generation” firewall, gives administrators full control over users, content and applications on their network.
- Application control
- Web caching
- Several WAN uplinks.
- Fault tolerance
- Content filtering
- Intrusion prevention, based on SNORT®.
- Antivirus and anti-phishing
- Web search filtering
