fortigate

Meraki MX-100 vs Fortigate 100E

Recently a customer with a Meraki MX80 was getting low speeds. The customer had a 400MB internet connection , however after turning all the Anti Threat Protection and Web Filtering on the Meraki it was only able to do around 60-80MB

Meraki Datasheet said this should be able to do 250MB however support confirmed after disabling all the Security features of the device and it peaking to 200mb , it was a limitation of the device.

We looked at scoping some comparisons particularly Fortinet

Meraki MX100 ( Datasheet )

Cost : Device : 3000GBP and Yearly License 3000GBP

Plus

  • Support their Existing Wireless Access Points

  • Managed Firmware Upgrades

Bad

  • License Renewals needs to be done on the day to avoid missing days

  • Meraki support will need to fix things the gui cannot

Fortigate 100E ( Datasheet )

Cost : 1560 GBP and Yearly License 908 GBP

Plus

  • Throughput we have seen 500MB on this device no problem , we don’t enable SSL Inspection. It can be controlled granularly in this respect rather than just on off

Cons

  • Larger support community for issues / fixes

The cost benefit of Fortinet is massive compared to Meraki as you can see on both parts! Meraki also control their AV as its written internally rather then outsourced like Cisco