Cisco Meraki MX250
Powerful Security and SD-WAN for the Branch & Campus

Overview:

The Cisco Meraki MX250 is an integrated router, next-generation firewall, traffic shaper, and Internet gateway that is centrally managed over the web. The MX250 offers an extensive feature set, yet is incredibly easy to deploy and manage. Intuitive web-based administration eliminates specialized training and dedicated staff, and cloud-based centralized management provides seamless multi-site networks, automatic firmware upgrades, and much more.

MX250 Highlights

A Complete Solution for Distributed Networks

The MX provides a complete networking and security solution that typically requires up to four appliances: branch router, next-generation firewall, Layer 7 traffic shaper, and CIPA-compliant content filter.

This integrated architecture dramatically reduces up-front costs and ongoing support and maintenance. Moreover, it provides unified, single pane-of-glass management, speeding deployment and eliminating the need for specialized training.

The First Cloud Managed Networking and Security Platform

The Cisco Meraki MX is a complete networking and security solution, designed to make distributed networks fast, secure, and easy to manage.

The MX is managed entirely through Cisco Meraki's web based dashboard. Designed with intuitive controls for IT generalists, the MX requires no training or specialized staff. The MX will even self-provision, allowing for remote branch deployments without on site IT.

Powerful Hardware Platform

The MX hardware platform is purpose-built for cloud management, with CPU and memory resources designed to provide application and content-aware security at the edge. The MX's robust platform enables advanced features like layer 7 application traffic shaping, content filtering, antivirus/antiphishing, and site-to-site VPN, while providing the throughput and capacity for modern, high-density networks.

Easy to Manage Without Training or On-Site Networking Expertise

The MX was designed for ease of use, even in branches without on-site IT. An intuitive interface, contextual help, and real-time support from the cloud eliminate specialized training. To deploy the MX in remote locations, simply connect the MX to the Internet, and it will securely self-provision from the cloud. Firmware upgrades, security patches, and signature updates are all delivered seamlessly from the cloud, ensuring that the MX is always up to date. Integrating broad security and networking features into a single intuitive device drastically reduces complexity in the branch.

Secure, Reliable Distributed Networking Without Costly MPLS

The MX eliminates costly MPLS tunnels with secure site-to-site VPN over redundant Internet connections. Using IPsec over the Internet, the MX links your branches to headquarters as well as to one another as if connected with a virtual Ethernet cable. Configuration headaches like NAT traversal are handled automatically from the cloud. The MX70's dual WAN ports with balancing and failover enable the use of redundant commodity Internet connections, providing more bandwidth and higher reliability than MPLS, at a fraction of the cost.

Connects and Secures Branches from the Cloud

Cisco Meraki's cloud management platform makes it easy to deploy secure, interconnected, centrally managed multi-site networks. Add new sites in seconds with auto-configuring VPN. Centrally manage user, content and application-aware firewall policies across your entire network.

Control Applications, Users, and Devices

The MX provides complete control over users, content, and applications, giving the visibility, security, and control required for mixed-use networks. Layer 7 fingerprinting technology lets administrators block objectionable content and applications and prevent recreational apps like BitTorrent from wasting precious bandwidth. Likewise, the MX can prioritize critical applications like voice and video. User fingerprinting identifies clients by name, operating system, or device (e.g. iPad). Fast search, automatic reports, and device quarantine provide complete visibility and control over the users across the entire network. Increases WAN Performance and Reduces Bandwidth Costs

Block unwanted bandwidth hogs like BitTorrent, and add capacity with WAN load balancing. Cache, deduplicate, and optimize traffic with WAN optimization to lower bandwidth consumption by up to 99% and improve application performance by up to 209x.

¹ Requires Advanced Security License
² Requires Threat Grid cloud subscription

Features:

MX Cloud Managed Security Appliance Series Solutions:

Cisco Meraki MX Security Appliances are ideal for organizations considering a Unified Threat Managment (UTM) solution, for distributed sites, campuses or datacenter VPN concentration. Since the MX is 100% cloud managed, installation and remote management is simple. The MX has a comprehensive suite of network services, eliminating the need for multiple appliances. These services include SD-WAN capabilities, application-based firewalling, content filtering, web search filtering, SNORT® based intrusion detection and prevention, Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP), web caching, 4G cellular failover and more. Auto VPN and SD-WAN features are available on our hardware and virtual appliances, configurable in Amazon Web Services.

Eliminates 6 complex appliances with a single, easy to manage platform.

Consolidate up to six devices with a single Cisco Meraki MX appliance

Powerful Hardware Platform

The MX hardware platform is purpose-built for cloud management, with CPU and memory resources designed to provide application and content-aware security at the edge. The MX's robust platform enables advanced features like layer 7 application traffic shaping, content filtering, antivirus/antiphishing, and site-to-site VPN, while providing the throughput and capacity for modern, high-density networks.

Inside the Cisco Meraki MX
MX450 shown, features vary by model

Ironclad Security

The MX platform has an extensive suite of security features including IDS/IPS, content filtering, web search filtering, antimalware, geo-IP based firewalling, IPsec VPN connectivity and Cisco Advanced Malware Protection, while providing the performance required for modern, bandwidth-intensive networks.

Layer 7 fingerprinting technology lets administrators identify unwanted content and applications and prevent recreational apps like BitTorrent from wasting precious bandwidth.

The integrated Cisco SNORT engine delivers superior intrusion prevention coverage, a key requirement for PCI 3.0 compliance. The MX also uses the Webroot BrightCloud URL categorization database for CIPA / IWF compliant content-filtering, Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) engine for anti-malware, AMP Threat Grid Cloud, and MaxMind for geo-IP based security rules.

Best of all, these industry-leading Layer 7 security engines and signatures are always kept up-to-date via the cloud, simplifying network security management and providing peace of mind to IT administrators.

SD-WAN Made Simple

Software-defined WAN is a new approach to network connectivity that lowers operational costs and improves resource usage for multisite deployments to use bandwidth more efficiently. This allows service providers to offer their customers the highest possible level of performance for critical applications without sacrificing security or data privacy.

Cloud Managed Architecture

Built on Cisco Meraki’s award-winning cloud architecture, the MX is the industry’s only 100% cloud-managed solution for Unified Threat Management (UTM) and SD-WAN in a single appliance. MX appliances self-provision, automatically pulling policies and configuration settings from the cloud. Powerful remote management tools provide network-wide visibility and control, and enable administration without the need for on-site networking expertise.

Cloud services deliver seamless firmware and security signature updates, automatically establish site-to-site VPN tunnels, and provide 24x7 network monitoring. Moreover, the MX’s intuitive browser-based management interface removes the need for expensive and time-consuming training.

For customers moving IT services to a public cloud service, Meraki offers a virtual MX for use in Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, enabling Auto VPN peering and SD-WAN for dynamic path selection.

Lifetime Warranty with Next-day Advanced Replacement

Cisco Meraki MX appliances include a limited lifetime hardware warranty that provides next-day advance hardware replacement. Cisco Meraki's simplified software and support licensing model also combines all software upgrades, centralized systems management, and phone support under a single, easy-to-understand model.

Cloud Management:

Cisco Meraki's cloud based management provides centralized visibility & control over Cisco Meraki's wired & wireless networking hardware, without the cost and complexity of wireless controllers or overlay management systems. Integrated with Cisco Meraki's entire product portfolio, cloud management provides feature rich, scalable, and intuitive centralized management for networks of any size.

Highlights

• Unified visibility and control of the entire network via a single dashboard: wireless, switching, and security appliances
• Streamlines large networks with tens of thousands of endpoints
• Zero-touch provisioning for rapid deployment
• Built-in multi site network management tools
• Automated network monitoring and alerts
• Intuitive interface eliminates costly training or added staff
• Network tagging engine - search and sync settings by tag
• Role-based administration and auditable change logs
• Continuous feature updates delivered from the cloud
• Highly available and secure (PCI / HIPAA compliant)

Cloud Managed Networks

Cisco Meraki's hardware products are built from the ground up for cloud management. As a result, they come out of the box with centralized control, layer 7 device and application visibility, real time web-based diagnostics, monitoring, reporting, and much more.

Cisco Meraki networks deploy quickly and easily, without training or dedicated staff. Moreover, Cisco Meraki provides a rich feature set that provides complete control over devices, users, and applications, allowing for flexible access policies and rich security without added cost or complexity.

Cisco Meraki's cloud management provides the features, security, and scalability for networks of any size. Cisco Meraki scales from small sites to campuses, and even distributed networks with thousands of sites. Cisco Meraki devices, which self-provision via the cloud, can be deployed in branches without IT. Firmware and security signature updates are delivered seamlessly, over the web. With the cloud, branches can automatically establish secure VPN tunnels between one another with a single click.

With a secure, PCI and HIPAA compliant architecture and fault tolerant design that preserves local network functionality during WAN outages, Cisco Meraki is field proven in high security and mission critical network applications.

Cloud Management Architecture

Cisco Meraki's architecture provides feature rich network management without on-site management appliances or WiFi controllers.

Every Cisco Meraki device - including wirelesss access points, Ethernet switches, and security appliances - connects over the Internet to Cisco Meraki's datacenters, which run Cisco Meraki's cloud management platform. These connections, secured via SSL, utilize a patented protocol that provides real time visibility and control, yet uses minimal bandwidth overhead (typically 1 kbps or less.)

In place of traditional command-line based network configuration, Cisco Meraki provides a rich web based dashboard, providing visibility and control over up to tens of thousands of Cisco Meraki devices, anywhere in the world. Tools, designed to scale to large and distributed networks, make policy changes, firmware updates, deploying new branches, etc. simple and expedient, regardless of size or location. Cisco Meraki's real time protocols combine the immediacy of on-premise management applications with the simplicity and centralized control of a cloud application.

Every Cisco Meraki device is engineered for cloud management. Specifically, this means that Cisco Meraki devices are designed with memory and CPU resources to perform packet processing, QoS, layer 3-7 security, encryption, etc. at the network edge. As a result, no network traffic passes through the cloud, with the cloud providing management functionality out of the data path. This architecture enables networks to scale horizontally, adding capacity simply by adding more endpoints, without concern for centralized bottlenecks or chokepoints. Equally important, since all packet processing is performed on premise, end-user functionality is not compromised if the network's connection to the cloud is interrupted.

Cisco Meraki's cloud platform is designed to spread computation and storage across independent server clusters in geographically isolated datacenters. Any server or datacenter can fail without affecting customers or the rest of the system. Additionally, Cisco Meraki's datacenter design is field proven to support tens of thousands of endpoints.

Cloud Management Architecture

Powerful Insight and Troubleshooting Tools

Cisco Meraki's cloud architecture delivers powerful insight and includes live tools integrated directly into the dashboard, giving instant analysis of performance, connectivity, and more. Using live tools, network administrators no longer need to go on site to perform routine troubleshooting tests. Visibility into devices, users, and applications gives administrators the information needed to enforce security policies and enable the performance needed in today's demanding network environments.

Troubleshooting tools such as ping, traceroute, throughput, and even live packet captures are integrated directly into the Cisco Meraki dashboard, dramatically reducing resolution times and enabling troubleshooting at remote locations without on-site IT staff.

Layer 7 application visibility

Out-of-Band Control Plane

Cisco Meraki's out-of-band control plane separates network management data from user data. Management data (e.g., configuration, statistics, monitoring, etc.) flows from Cisco Meraki devices (wireless access points, switches, and security appliances) to Cisco Meraki's cloud over a secure Internet connection. User data (web browsing, internal applications, etc.) does not flow through the cloud, instead flowing directly to its destination on the LAN or across the WAN.

Advantages of an out of band control plane:

Scalability

• Unlimited throughput: no centralized controller bottlenecks
• Add devices or sites without MPLS tunnels
• Add switching capacity without stacking limitations

Reliability

• Redundant cloud service provides high availability
• Network functions even if management traffic is interrupted

Security

• No user traffic passes through Cisco Meraki's datacenters
• Fully HIPAA / PCI compliant

What happens if a network loses connectivity to the Cisco Meraki cloud?
Because of Cisco Meraki's out of band architecture, most end users are not affected if Cisco Meraki wireless APs, switches, or security appliances cannot communicate with Cisco Meraki's cloud services (e.g., because of a temporary WAN failure):

• Users can access the local network (printers, file shares, etc.)
• If WAN connectivity is available, users can access the Internet
• Network policies (firewall rules, QoS, etc.) continue to be enforced
• Users can authenticate via 802.1X/RADIUS and can roam wirelessly between access points
• Users can initiate and renew DHCP leases
• Established VPN tunnels continue to operate
• Local configuration tools are available (e.g., device IP configuration)

While Cisco Meraki's cloud is unreachable, management, monitoring, and hosted services are temporarily unavailable:

• Configuration and diagnostic tools are unavailable
• Usage statistics are stored locally until the connection to the cloud is re-established, at which time they are pushed to the cloud
• Splash pages and related functionality are unavailable

Cisco Meraki Datacenter Design

Cisco Meraki's cloud management service is colocated in tier-1, SAS70 type II certified datacenters. These datacenters feature state of the art physical and cyber security and highly reliable designs. All Cisco Meraki services are replicated across multiple independent datacenters, so that customer-facing services fail over rapidly in the event of a catastrophic datacenter failure.

Security Tools for Administrators

In addition to Cisco Meraki's secure out-of-band architecture and hardened datacenters, Cisco Meraki provides a number of tools for administrators to maximize the security of their network deployments. These tools provide optimal protection, visibility, and control over your Cisco Meraki network.

Two-factor authentication
Two-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security to an organization's network by requiring access to an administrator's phone, in addition to her username and password, in order to log in to Cisco Meraki's cloud services. Cisco Meraki's two factor authentication implementation uses secure, convenient, and cost effective SMS technology: after entering their username and password, an administrator is sent an a one-time passcode via SMS, which they must enter before authentication is complete. In the event that a hacker guesses or learns an administrator's password, she still will not be able to access the organization's account, as the hacker does not have the administrator's phone. Cisco Meraki includes two-factor authentication for all enterprise users at no additional cost.

Password policies
Organization-wide security policies for Cisco Meraki accounts help protect access to the Cisco Meraki dashboard. These tools allow administrators to:

• Force periodic password changes (e.g., every 90 days)
• Require minimum password length and complexity
• Lock users out after repeated failed login attempts
• Disallow password reuse
• Restrict logins by IP address

Role-based administration
Role-based administration lets supervisors appoint administrators for specific subsets of an organization, and specify whether they have read-only access to reports and troubleshooting tools, administer managed guest access, or can make configuration changes to the network. This minimizes the chance of accidental or malicious misconfiguration, and restricts errors to isolated parts of the network.

Configuration change alerts
The Cisco Meraki system can automatically send human-readable email and text message alerts when configuration changes are made, enabling the entire IT organization to stay abreast of new policies. Change alerts are particularly important with large or distributed IT organizations.

Configuration and login audits
Cisco Meraki logs the time, IP, and approximate location (city, state) of logged in administrators. A searchable configuration change log indicates what configuration changes were made, who they were made by, and which part of the organization the change occurred in.

SSL certificates
Cisco Meraki accounts can only be accessed via https, ensuring that all communication between an administrator's browser and Cisco Meraki's cloud services is encrypted.

Idle Timeout
30 seconds before being logged out, users are shown a notice that allows them to extend their session. Once time expires, users are asked to log in again.

Compare:

Lifetime Warranty with Next-day Advanced Replacement

Cisco Meraki MX appliances include a limited lifetime hardware warranty that provides next-day advance hardware replacement. Cisco Meraki's simplified software and support licensing model also combines all software upgrades, centralized systems management, and phone support under a single, easy-to-understand model. For complete details, please visit meraki.cisco.com/support.

Product Options

	MX84	MX100	MX250	MX400	MX450	MX600
Recommended Use Cases	Medium branch	Large branch	Campus or VPN concentrator	Campus or VPN concentrator	Campus or VPN concentrator	Campus or VPN concentrator
Recommended Clients	200	500	2,000	2,000	10,000	10,000
Stateful Firewall Throughput	500 Mbps	750 Mbps	4 Gbps	1 Gbps	6 Gbps	1 Gbps
Advanced Security Throughput	320 Mbps	650 Mbps	2 Gbps	1 Gbps	4 Gbps	1 Gbps
Maximum VPN Throughput	250 Mbps	500 Mbps	1 Gbps	1 Gbps	2 Gbps	1 Gbps
Maximum Concurrent VPN tunnels	100	250	3,000	1,000	5,000	5,000
WAN Interfaces - Dedicated	2x GbE RJ45 1 x USB (cellular failover1)	1 x GbE RJ45 1 x USB (cellular failover1)	2 x 10GbE SFP+ 1 x USB (cellular failover1)	2 x 1GbE RJ45 2 x USB (cellular failover1)	2 x 10GbE SFP+ 1 x USB (cellular failover1)	2 x 1GbE RJ45 2 x USB (cellular failover1)
WAN Interfaces - Dual-purpose2	-	1 x GbE RJ45	-	-	-	-
LAN Interfaces	8 x GbE2 x GbE (SFP)	8 x GbE 2 x GbE (SFP)	8 x GbE (RJ45) 8 x GbE (SFP) 8 x 10GbE (SFP+)	2 x GbE (LAN bypass) 8 x GbE (RJ45) 8 x GbE (SFP) 2 x 10GbE (SFP+)	8 x GbE (RJ45) 8 x GbE (SFP) 8 x 10GbE (SFP+)	2 x GbE (LAN bypass) 8 x GbE (RJ45) 8 x GbE (SFP) 2 x 10GbE (SFP+)
Web Caching	N/A	N/A	128GB (SSD)	1TB	128GB (SSD)	4 x 1 TB (RAID)
Mounting	1U rack	1U rack	1U rack	1U rack	1U rack	1U rack
Dimensions	19” x 10 “ x 1.75” (483 mm x 254 mm x 44 mm)	19” x 10 “ x 1.75” (483 mm x 254 mm x 44 mm)	19” x 17.3 “ x 1.75” (483 mm x 440 mm x 44 mm)	19.0” x 22.0 “ x 1.75” (483 mm x 559 mm x 44 mm)	19” x 17.3 “ x 1.75” (483 mm x 440 mm x 44 mm)	19.0” x 22.0 “ x 3.5” (483 mm x 559 mm x 89 mm)
Weight	9 lb (4.1kg)	9 lb (4.1kg)	16 lb (7.3kg)	33 lb (15.0 kg)	16 lb (7.3kg)	53 lb (24.0 kg)
Power Supply	Internal 100-220V 50/60Hz AC	Internal 100-220V 50/60Hz AC	Modular 100-220V 50/60Hz AC 2 x 250WAC PSU	100-220V 50/60Hz AC (dual)	Modular 100-220V 50/60Hz AC 2 x 250WAC PSU	100-220V 50/60Hz AC (dual)
Power Load (idle/max)	26W / 32W	30W / 55W	105W / 190W	123W / 215W	105W / 190W	132W / 226W
Operating Temperature	32°F to 104°F (0°C to 40°C)
Humidity	5% to 95%

¹ Requires separate cellular modem
² Interface configurable for WAN or LAN use
³ The maximum concurrent VPN tunnels are based on lab testing scenarios where no client traffic is transferring over the VPN tunnels.

Specifications:

Accessories:

The Cisco Meraki MX250, MX250, MX400, MX450, and MX600 models support pluggable optics for high-speed backbone or link aggregation connections between wiring closets or to aggregation switches. Cisco Meraki offers several standards-based Gigabit and 10 Gigabit pluggable modules. Each appliance has also been tested for compatibility with several third-party modules.

Model	Description
MA-SFP-1GB-SX	Cisco Meraki 1 GbE SFP SX Fiber Module (1000BASE-SX, range: 550m) for MX84, MX250, MX250, MX450, MX400, MX600
MA-SFP-1GB-TX	Cisco Meraki 1 GbE RJ45 Copper Module (1000BASE-T for twisted pair) for MX84, MX250, MX250, MX450,, MX400, MX600
MA-SFP-10GB-SR	Cisco Meraki 10 GbE Short Range SFP+ Module (10GBASE-SR, range: 400m) for MX250, MX450, MX400, MX600
MA-CBL-TA-1M	Cisco Meraki 10 GbE Twinax Cable with SFP+ Connectors (10GSFP+Cu, range: 1m) for MX250, MX450, MX400, MX600
MA-CBL-TA-3M	Cisco Meraki 10 GbE Twinax Cable with SFP+ Connectors (10GSFP+Cu, range: 3m) for MX250, MX450, MX400, MX600
MA-PWR-250WAC	Meraki MX250/MX450 Power Supply Unit (PSU)
MA-FAN-18K	Meraki 18K RPM system fan for MX250 and MX450
MA-PWR-CORD-US	Meraki Power Cables - 1 x power cable required for each MX, 2x power cables required for MX250, MX450, MX400, MX600

Note: Please refer to Cisco Meraki.com for additional single-mode and multi-mode fiber transceiver modules

License Editions:

An organization must have a valid Enterprise Edition license or Advanced Security Edition license for the MX series in order to work properly. Each organization is licensed for a maximum number of security appliances for a certain amount of time (typically from one year to five years).

In addition, each organization is required to use either the Enterprise Edition or the Advanced Security Edition uniformly. For example, you can have all 25 appliances using Enterprise Edition or Advanced Security Edition, but you cannot have 20 appliances using one edition and 5 using the other edition. If you wish to use Enterprise Edition for some appliances and Advanced Security Edition for other appliances, you need to create two organizations, one for your appliances with the Enterprise Edition, and another for the appliances with the Advanced Security Edition.

You can manage a given organization's licenses on the Organization > License info page. The page displays the following information:

• Status: OK or problem
• Expiration date
• MX Advanced Security Enabled or Disabled
• Licensed device limit for each device type
• Current device count for each device type
• License history (list of licenses that have been applied to the network)

Enterprise vs. Advance Security license

The following table provides a list of the major features and the required licensing.

Feature	Enterprise license	Advanced Security license
Stateful firewall
VLAN to VLAN routing
Link bonding / failover
3G / 4G failover
Traffic shaping / prioritization
WAN optimization
Site-to-site VPN
Client VPN
MPLS to VPN Failover
Splash pages
Configuration templates
HTTP content caching
Group Policies
Client connectivity alerts
Intrusion detection / prevention
Content filtering
Anti-virus and anti-phishing
Youtube for Schools
Web Search Filtering

Adding licenses

You can add a license by clicking Add another license. You will then have two actions, or "operations", to choose from:

• License more devices: increases the number of devices that can exist within this Cisco Meraki Dashboard organization.
• Renew my Dashboard license: extends the licensing period of this Cisco Meraki Dashboard organization. You must renew the license for all devices in the organization. You cannot renew licensing for only certain devices within the organization.

You cannot add an Enterprise MX license to an Advanced Security organization. Adding an Advanced Security license to an Enterprise organization will convert that organization to Advanced Security. All existing Enterprise MX licenses will have their duration halved to compensate for the difference in the licensing costs, and the organization's license cotermination date will be adjusted accordingly.

Expired licenses or exceeding the licensed device limit

If an organization's license is expired or the number of devices in the organization exceeds the licensed limit, the administrator has 30 days to return the organization to a valid licensed state. During this grace period, the system reminds the administrator to add additional licenses. After 30 days, administrators are not able to access the Dashboard (except to add additional licenses) and all Cisco Meraki equipment in the organization will cease to function.

Use Cases:

Cloud-Managed Multi-Service Router

Build an easy to deploy and reliable network that doesn't require costly solutions like MPLS tunnels. Deploy the MX series in missioncritical networks using link failover. Simplify access and visibility through cloud-managed site-to-site VPN. Secure remote networks using advanced security features like anti-virus filtering. Optimize network costs using traffic shaping.

Inline Traffic Shaper and Network Monitor

The MX series are equally indispensable when deployed behind an existing firewall and router. Optimize network traffic with application-aware (layer 7) traffic shaping and firewall. Prioritize mission critical applications or VoIP traffic while setting limits on recreational traffic, e.g. peer-to-peer applications. Discover all client devices, identify users and monitor printers.

Documentation:

Download the Cisco Meraki MX Series Datasheet (PDF).