Real-world Use Cases
In this section, we’ll cover the most common deployment use cases for the Meraki MX:
• “Everything on”
• K-12 school with limited bandwidth
• K-12 school with high bandwidth
• College / higher education institution
• Retail branch
• Head-end concentrator for retail branches
For each case, we’ll articulate which features should be turned on and measure the maximum
throughput achieved with each MX model.
Firewall ConFiguraTion
Security features enabled:
• NAT mode
• Split-tunnel VPN
• WAN opt
• Content filtering (full list mode enabled on MX60,
partial list mode enabled on all other models)
• Traffic shaping
• Anti-virus/anti-phishing
• IPS
• Web caching (not available on MX60/MX60W)
TesT TraFFiC paTTern
Traffic flowing through the MX security appliance for testing
purposes was composed of the following protocols/applications.
MX60 / MX60W
MX80
MX100
MX400
MX600
Max throughput
10Mbps
40Mbps
75Mbps
160Mbps
160Mbps
Client count
25
100
500
2,000
10,000
10% HTTP browsing
20% HTTPS browsing
20% HTTP download
20% FTP
20% CIFS non-VPN
5% HTTP over VPN
5% CIFS over VPN
ThroughpuT ConFiguraTion
USE CASE:
“Everything On”
Often, administrators would like to know what network throughput would look like if they turned
on all of the features of their MX security appliance (worst-case scenario). Please refer to the
“Features, benefits, and the performance impact” table in this document when fine-tuning the
firewall configuration to achieve maximum security without unnecessary performance degradation.
Cisco Systems, Inc. | 500 Terry A. Francois Blvd, San Francisco, CA 94158 | (415) 432-1000 | [email protected]
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