CISCO DESIGNED Meraki Go Ethernet Router Firewall Plus | Cloud Managed | VPN | Cisco [GX50HW-US]

I am really excited that Meraki has reached into the SMB/SOHO market. Meraki has fantastic support that you're just not going to find in another product at this price range. It's solid dependable hardware matched with great support. If you're looking for alternatives to Ubiquiti this is a solid option with far superior support. One thing I wanted to point out, that I couldn't find anywhere - You can configure port 2 to be a secondary WAN interface. I couldn't find this anywhere on their website or in the product listing, but it does seem to have that capability. I have not personally tested the functionality, but it does allow you to configure port 2 as a second WAN port. You must go into the LOCAL administrative interface, not the Meraki Go interface; there you can configure port assignment, etc.

Various groups of internet criminals have broke into my lan and hacked around my devices multiple times starting in 2012. Perplexed at their willingness to squander prodigious amounts of time and money on a negative ROI proposition on their part I wasn’t too worried about it and reported to the appropriate authorities each time. After the authorities made no effort, at all, after multiple reports to them and after buying home consumer level hardware replacements a few times I finally just spent this money on a professional grade firewall with professional support. The groups of criminals can’t break in now and they are very upset about it. I am happy though because 12 years of them fruitlessly hacking in a disabled man’s network is indicative of something deeply wrong with them and I am not waiting for them to get their head on straight and whoever is paying them. It’s time to move on. Also, this firewall made it so easy to configure my lan securely the way I want it unlike prior home consumer hardware I had used in the past. I have gave the WI-FI 5 stars but note there is no Wi-Fi on this firewall.

They paint a pretty picture. What you actually get is complete trash. The setup process is never 10 minutes. It always has updates to do, it never connects very clearly on the first try. Generally I have set them up and walk away for an hour or two. Then I troubleshoot. This resolves the issue of wondering why it just has a blue and red blinking light. Which the indicator lights are not consistently accurate. Now with that said, my product failed a few weeks back. It just stopped working. I tried some troubleshooting and contacted meraki. Took about 24 hours to get a response back every time. Most companies these days give you a person you can contact at a moments notice. Not Cisco. Good luck trying to talk to someone with their go products. Don’t expect their app to work every time too. I had to close the app twice before the “contact support” button actually worked. After about two weeks with them saying they can’t see the product is offline, I gave up. I should have had a replacement by now. Most other companies would do that. Honestly, just being able to speak to someone on the phone would have hopefully helped resolve some issues on the spot. Rather than some blanket emails of troubleshooting options to which I had already tried. I’ve used other far cheaper hardware before meraki go that failed at a lesser rate than meraki go products and I can call someone at a moments notice for troubleshooting. This is not my first failed meraki go product. Maybe I should have learned my lesson the first time. Lastly, the app. I hoped for an app that gave me a more hands on experience. Since that’s kind of what they are selling here. A more robust product for a small business. In the end, it’s a basic app that gives you a really basic experience. Since they stopped responding to my emails, I guess I’ll take the hint and move on.

Great firewall for VPN. Cisco Meraki is some of the best price to performance you can get, and easy to use.

I came from a full-stack Ubiquiti setup and let me tell you, Meraki GO is far superior. Sure, you won't get all the fancy bells and whistles that UniFi offers, but the reliability and stability of this equipment far exceeds anything Ubiquiti has to offer. It all started with replacing my U6-Pro with a Meraki GO WiFi 6 AP. I was sick of hearing my wife say, "Did you do something to the internet" when I hadn't touched a thing. I replaced the AP and noticed a difference right away. No longer did I have issues with signal or throughput. As Meraki advertised, it just worked. I didn't even have to tune the WiFi radios, unlike UniFi. Meraki magic I guess? Considering how well the Meraki GO AP performed, I decided to jump ship and migrated to a full-stack Meraki-GO setup. Gone are the days of having to login and tune my network or figure out what update broke my equipment. Since installation, I haven't had to change a single thing. The system works flawlessly. I knocked 1 star off due to the value proposition. The switch and AP are priced right, but the Firewall Plus is a little overpriced in my opinion. If it could handle gigabit speed, then it would be adequately priced. That's the only reason I took a star off. Also, I'm not sure why other reviews state you need the subscription in order to make use of the equipment. You do not. It's an added security feature. My equipment works flawlessly without the additional security subscription. I wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger on this equipment again. I wish I would have done it sooner.

The unit is not terrible, if you are looking for the very basic bare minimum protection without the security subscription. Without purchasing the annual security subscription, this product is a waste of money and time. Without the subscription, advanced content filtering is practically impossible. Without the subscription, you can only block one website at a time. There is no option to use url block lists. Third-party supports for options like pi-hole are not supported on these models. Double Wan is not supported. Double Nat has it's limitations. Cisco has done a very good job in producing a low-cost device, but unless you purchase the annual subscription, annual at $108 (cheapest I found and no guarantee the subscription will not increase annually), you're better off with either of the sense boxes or unify.

Don’t go cheap with your security. Control your network like a small business by utilizing this enterprise grade technology. I debated too long to install the MerakiGO equipment mainly due to cost. Now that I have it, I’ve purchased more and installed them in other people’s network. You won’t be disappointed. Get your today!

I bought multiple Meraki products to find out that support is them providing you a link to read the instructions. They do not offer support in detail regarding the product and how to customize for a better effective deployment. Sadly, you must rely on a lot of YouTube videos and then hope it was done correctly.