Hello Guys,
I’d like to have some opinions from you.
I’m preparing a quote for an elementary school. New tablets and laptops, new networking, security etc.
This school has about 50/60 students. Students will use managed Macbooks and iPads from the school.
The most important thing I need on the network part is Web filtering. We will have about 50-80 clients connected to the network at peak.
I have to choose between a Meraki MX84 or an Untangle z6. I got some offers from our suppliers and I can’t stop asking myself how can Meraki cost less than Untangle?
MX84 + 5 years EDU license and hw warranty: 3600 CHF
z6 + 3 years EDU license for 150 devices and hw warranty 4200 CHF
1 Like
@cabassi, not sure where you are located but if you are looking for “safe school” rated or the ability to get “safe school” certification for internet safety. SafeDNS is located in US but provide content filtering world wide for its clients and is very reasonable for educational licensing. We are paying $300/yr with 200 licenses (smallest license package) . This includes per client installs as well as 5 separate NAT filtering IP addresses, each can be custom configured for different filters along with Block Pages that will have the customers business logo and message. Works with static and dynamic ISP’s providers. I found it fairly easy to set up and implement not only on the school network but to install on specific devices that may travel outside of our wired/wireless network. Just an alternate suggestion for school environment where they are responsible for the content the children are exposed too.
Cheers,
Scott
Is the MX86 pricing related to your additional purchase of Meraki APs/switches? If not maybe its to encourage you to consider those, as a loss leader. Final option is that because Cisco Meraki is a much bigger business, and for non-EDU they are definitely charging more than Untangle, they don’t need to make a large profit on EDU.
@brwainer No, I’m only buying the Gateway.
Regarding the price for Meraki, the MX84 with 5 years license and hw warranty costs 4500 CHF for normal buyers.
Even for non EDU it costs less than Untangle.
@ScottyB I’m located in Switzerland. For basic DNS filtering even OpenDNS should work. Also we’d like to have it on the gateway level instead of on the endpoint. And I will also need a pretty good gateway to do traffic shaping and some other things 
We have it set up on the Gateway, each of our subnets, Admin, Teacher and student access, have dedicated DNS server addresses. OpenDNS is a great product, we looked into it.
cheers,
Scott
For the Meraki, are you quoting with an Enterprise License or Advanced Security License? Untangle is equivalent to Advanced Security. Meraki MX Security and SD-WAN Licensing - Cisco Meraki
@brwainer The quote is with the Advanced Security license, the Enterprise doesn’t include Web filtering and Application control.
Btw what would you choose between the 2 solutions? Since I need web filtering I will always need to pay a license for that, so the “Meraki becomes just a metal box if you don’t pay” is not a big issue here.
Well since you asked I went and double checked the specs on them.
https://meraki.cisco.com/product-collateral/mx-sizing-guide/?file
Untangle NG Firewall Appliances | Untangle (Bottom of page)
MX84: 1TB storage, speeds limited to 500Mbps, speed with all security features enabled 320Mbps
z6: 512GB NVMe storage, speeds up to 950Mbps, speed with most security features enabled 950Mbps
The z6 vastly outperforms the MX84, so the question as to why the price is higher has been answered. Were you just comparing those two because they are the cheapest rackmount from each brand? If so have you considered the z4 or z4 Plus (just extra RAM) on a rackmount shelf?
If you absolutely must have a rackmount, then the decision is about having extra performance headroom versus the absolute lowest cost. Keep in mind that inter-VLAN traffic is inspected as well normally, not just WAN traffic.