With just two people, the IT team at Eastview Church is able to configure, deploy, and troubleshoot all of their devices remotely, thanks to Cisco Meraki APs, switches, security appliances, and mobile device management. With Meraki, they’re able to provide a reliable and secure network for thousands of visitors a week, see live traffic on any given switch port, and set up secure site-to-site VPN.

Original Networking Challenges

• Network infrastructure was a “disaster” prior to Meraki
• All IT was outsourced and network hardware was comprised of multiple vendors
• Needed a more simple, robust, and flexible solution
• Required WiFi for the 200,000 square ft building
• Sought a reliable backup of all resources for their disaster recovery site

Why Cisco Meraki

• Cloud based dashboard enables configuration and management of all hardware without the need for multiple interfaces or knowledge of CLI

With WiFi, switches, firewall, and Systems Manager, we are able to walk the topology from the actual client all the way up to the firewall and every hardware node in between – to be able to see what we can see today is amazing.Dustin Cassady, Pastor of IT

The Deployment

• Started with Meraki APs, moved to Meraki switches, security appliances, and MDM over the course of 4 years
• Public and private SSIDs for guests and staff with traffic shaping on the guest network
• Site to site VPN configured with the disaster recovery site, client VPN set up for staff
• Systems Manager used for asset tracking and BYOD to protect company resources 

Results

• MR Access Points provide fast, reliable wireless for 6,000+ church attendees
• MS Switches enable increased network performance and enhanced visibility into live traffic and bandwidth use on ports
• QoS rules on the MX Security Appliance prioritize traffic for special events
• Z1 teleworker appliances provide VPN for remote workers
• Systems Manager profiles make it easy to push out internal resources, like email, to employee devices
• Live troubleshooting tools and data in dashboard provide visibility and control with a few mouse clicks