City of Rancho Cordova, CA

Overview

Rancho Cordova, a city located in the Sacramento Metropolitan Area, is home to around 65,000 residents and employs an additional 120 people as staff and contractors. The city provides Wi-Fi to public spaces around the city, as well as to code enforcement and animal services vehicles. Rancho Cordova uses Cisco Meraki features like Auto VPN, layer 7 traffic shaping, VLAN tagging, and Active Directory integration to create a secure and reliable network across the city.

 

Original networking challenges

• Previous networking solution had an unwieldy interface, many components, and experienced frequent failures
• Costs associated with maintaining and refreshing old hardware on a yearly basis became too high

When we brought in a Cisco Meraki test unit, I thought, ‘Wow, this is really something we could deploy and manage easily.’

 

Jay Hadley

IT Manager

Why Cisco Meraki

• Intuitive, centralized management of Cisco Meraki hardware across all locations via the cloud-based dashboard
• Remote management abilities make it simple to quickly create and modify group policies, traffic-shaping rules, and other network settings
• Site-to-site VPN between locations set up in two clicks and provides failover for wireless point to point
• Separate user profiles, settings, and tags for staff-owned, city-owned, and IT devices managed via Cisco Meraki Systems Manager
• Network alerts notify IT department if devices go offline or if a rogue AP is detected

 

The deployment

• Tested wireless APs and chose Cisco Meraki for its reliable connection and simple management via the dashboard
• Quickly deployed access points, switches, security appliances, and built-in MDM
• Public Wi-Fi with open authentication but limited per-client bandwidth is available for events, conference rooms, etc.
• Hidden staff SSID with Active Directory authentication for city employees
• Code enforcement and animal services departments located in a separate government building can connect directly to the Rancho Cordova network on the same SSID

 

Results

• Code enforcement and animal services vehicles are now part of the LAN via secure site-to-site VPN
• All core switches are now Meraki MS switches
• Continuously expanding Wi-Fi to more parts of the city
• Testing Meraki Z1 telecommuter to allow city managers to work from home
• Using the Meraki app to manage and view all networks while away from the computer