Everybody is excited about the new Meraki firewalls: the Meraki MX75, MX85, MX95, and MX105. It’s not news to anybody that Meraki has developed an unprecedentedly easy-to-navigate ecosystem for its’ products to co-exist in. And this cloud-based, centrally managed platform has only grown in size and maturity. Over time, a growing, increasingly-loyal customer base have simply come to expect their Merakis to be simple to set up, easy to use, and a breeze to manage. Well, the Meraki MX85 is no different!
The MX85 is a predictably friendly little appliance that puts non-IT types at ease with it’s ‘snap’ deployment. In fact, MX85 can be installed in seconds, and is completely cloud-managed. At that point, it then gets all of its firmware upgrades through an SSL connection. The VPN can be set up in 5 minutes.
Since the MX85 is 100% cloud managed, installation and remote management is simple. And it has a ton of network services. These include SD-WAN, application-based firewalling, content filtering, web search filtering. Plus, there’s SNORT® based intrusion detection and prevention, Cisco Advanced Malware Protection, and 4G cellular failover.
Performance
Unlike many vendors, Meraki tends to refine and perfect it’s models over time, rather than sort of re-inventing them with new models. So the MX85 does everything the MX84 does, just better. Both have hands-off set-up, stateful firewall, Layer 7 application visibility, traffic shaping, and content filtering. But where the MX84 pushes 500 Mbps of Stateful Firewall Throughput, the MX85 reaches 1 Gbps. VPN Throughput for the MX84 is up to 250 Mbps, for the MX85 its 500 Mbps. Advanced Security Throughput are 320 Mbps and 750 Mbps, respectively. The MX85 can support up to 250 users, about 50 more than the MX84
The interfaces are a little different; the MX84 has 10x GbE 2 × SFP USB 3G/4G ports. On the other hand, the MX85 has 2x GbE SFP and 2x GbE RJ45 (1x PoE+) WAN ports, and 8x GbE RJ45 and 2x GbE SFP USB 3G/4G LAN ports.
Features of the Meraki MX85
The MX85 is ideal for small to medium businesses, and also schools, hospitals, and institutional settings. As such, it has features like Content filtering, Google SafeSearch and YouTube for Schools. Plus, there’s Intrusion detection and prevention, Advanced Malware Protection, and Auto VPN™ self-configuring site-to-site VPN. It supports 75 VPN tunnels.
The MX series is the industry’s only 100% cloud-managed UTM firewall/SD-WAN in a single appliance. MX appliances self-provision, automatically pulling policies and configuration settings from the cloud. This auto-pilot personality is typical of all of Meraki’s products. They’re just easygoing, plug-and-play devices that non-IT types feel comfortable with. And it’s one of the big reasons they are so well-loved in the educational, healthcare, and small business sectors.
Licensing
Given the range of use cases that can be solved, there are three options for the MX series. They will give you the flexibility to select the license most appropriate for your needs.
The licensing structure for MX appliances is the same as that of any other Meraki device–1:1 ratio of devices to licenses. They are, in ascending order, Enterprise, Advanced Security, and Secure SD-WAN Plus. Just pick the best license for your use case. And, as always, Corporate Armor is always happy to help with this process.
We have a team of experienced, certified Meraki specialists who are ready to guide you in the direction that’s best for you. So reach out here, or call 877-449-0458. Thanks for reading!
Meraki MX85 highlights
| 1 Gbps Stateful Firewall Throughput |
| 500 Mbps VPN Throughput |
| 750 Mbps Advanced Security Throughput |
| Supports 250 VPN tunnels |