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Simplifying management of distributed networks with new model and features

Introducing the MX100, integrated Sourcefire Snort IPS, network templates, wired splash pages, and more!

We’ve got exciting news if you’re a current or future Cisco Meraki MX security appliance customer. First, we’ve got a brand new MX model available for order: the MX100. Second, we’re releasing several new feature enhancements in our next firmware update, scheduled for the end of this calendar year.  The biggest of these are:

  • Integrated Sourcefire Snort IPS

  • Configuration templates for multi-MX environments

  • Wired splash pages

  • MPLS to VPN failover

These new features provide redundancy and additional management flexibility to organizations with multiple remote sites, and expand the MX’s capabilities in managing BYOD environments.

 

MX100

The new Meraki MX100 addresses growing capacity requirements in modern networks, and offers customers looking for a medium-sized branch solution a choice that fits between our MX80 and MX400 models.  Specs for the MX100 include:

  • Firewall throughput: 500Mbps

  • VPN throughput: 250Mbps

  • Supports approximately 500 users

  • Built-in WAN Opt cache: 1TB

  • SFP uplinks

  • Web caching

  • Dual WAN with 3G/4G failover

The new Meraki MX100 Security Appliance.

 

Integrated Sourcefire Snort Intrusion Prevention

We’re excited to announce that the Cisco Meraki MX will integrate with Sourcefire’s Snort IPS.  This enhancement provides immediate, automatic containment of malicious network activity at the perimeter.  Additionally, dashboard reporting and alerts display threat trends by type, origin, destination, and over time — making it easy to evaluate these statistics from any Internet-accessible location.

IPS integration will be rolled out to all existing Advanced Security MX customers as part of the latest firmware update.

MX integration with Sourcefire Snort simplifies threat detection, containment, and reporting.

 

Configuration Templates

This feature extends the rich remote management of distributed sites by allowing IT admins to create and oversee templatized MX networks. Often, organizations with several MX security appliances deployed at remote sites will want to make identical configuration changes across them all.  For example, perhaps an IT admin wants to throttle YouTube traffic at several locations; before, individual changes would need to be made on each site’s MX. Now, with configuration templates, IT admins can make organization-wide changes once and those settings will propagate to all other MXs linked via templates to the master.

Configuration templates let you make changes to multiple MXs from a single master template.

 

MX wired splash

Meraki security appliances can create click-through or Facebook Login splash pages on a per-VLAN basis, enabling a smoother guest BYOD experience and allowing IT admins to provide different login experiences to different groups of users.  Depending on underlying network architecture, the Meraki MX’s splash page settings can even propagate down to wireless clients associating to APs that are downstream of the MX.

MX wired splash let IT admins customize user login experiences on a per-VLAN basis.

 

MPLS to VPN failover

Many organizations use MPLS to securely connect remote sites to their main offices, ensuring data privacy and low traffic latency. However, MPLS is not foolproof, and when it does fail, a viable Plan B must exist to ensure that distributed sites can continue to communicate with each other, and that the security of this communication is not compromised.

Enter the Meraki MX. It will be possible to configure the Meraki Auto VPN solution (site-to-site IPsec VPN in 3 dashboard clicks) as an automatic failover to MPLS connections.  So in the event your MPLS network is unreachable, traffic can be automatically routed to MX uplinks hosting secure, site-to-site VPN across your entire organization.

For More Information

Stay tuned for additional blog posts on these exciting new features, and check out our website for more details about the MX100. If you want to get started right away, you can always request an MX100 evaluation (risk-free, with no commitment) to test drive in your own environment.

Finally, as always, we’re listening to your feedback, so please let us know what you think about these new features on Twitter or through our dashboard’s “make a wish” feature — and offer any ideas you may have for others!