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Juniper Session Smart Router vs Meraki SD-WAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Juniper Session Smart Router
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Routers (5th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (5th)
Meraki SD-WAN
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Networking (SDN) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Enterprise Networking solutions, they serve different purposes. Juniper Session Smart Router is designed for Routers and holds a mindshare of 3.1%, up 1.0% compared to last year.
Meraki SD-WAN, on the other hand, focuses on Software Defined Networking (SDN), holds 10.0% mindshare, down 18.8% since last year.
Routers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Juniper Session Smart Router3.1%
MikroTik Routers and Switches18.4%
Cisco Enterprise Routers16.7%
Other61.8%
Routers
Software Defined Networking (SDN) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Meraki SD-WAN10.0%
Cisco ACI8.9%
Juniper Contrail Networking8.3%
Other72.8%
Software Defined Networking (SDN)
 

Featured Reviews

Esther Sultaana - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Secure healthcare connectivity has protected patient data and supports reliable telemedicine
Everything can be improved. It could improve its security stack with malware detection, particularly in healthcare because of ransomware. Now you have IoT vulnerabilities, so something like advanced malware detection or threat analysis would help. This is something I worked with around 2016 to 2017. Perhaps they have added those features, but I know they didn't have it then. Some security profiles for specific medical devices would be helpful. Sandboxing would be good. Dedicated telemedicine routing profiles would be beneficial because we have a lot of telemedicine going on. Real-time sessions for clinicians may need pre-built templates for EHR and EMR. I think those would be good if they're not already there. I don't know what the latest router has, but I know they didn't have those features then. There can always be improvements because technology is constantly advancing. It is a very solid router, and that is one of many industries that could utilize it. Healthcare is one such industry, and if it works for healthcare, then that is a major plus for that router.
Mageshwaran S - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at airtel
Experienced streamlined network management with enhanced usability and room for improved security features
On the security features, when compared to Fortinet, they have more patterns and AI-generated ones. Meraki SD-WAN is slowly implementing AI, but it is not yet full-fledged. If AI comes into the picture, it will be helpful. I work with Fortinet where with a single command you can deploy the entire SD-WAN along with FortiGuard within minutes. For AI, it can discover and connect, but currently, we are doing it manually. In Meraki SD-WAN, some features require additional licenses and subscriptions. If these were bundled together, such as 10 or 20 licenses, it would be very helpful for a mini branch or small campus area coverage.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The best feature is the easiest way to deploy configuration and also back up them, and also to roll back quickly if there's an incident."
"As compared to the other major vendors in the SD-WAN market, such as VeloCloud, Cisco, and others, the tunnel-free and secure vector routing technology is its major USP, which gives plenty of room to discuss with the customer why IPSec from 1998 is a bit outdated."
"Customer service is very prompt."
"Juniper Session Smart Router has positively impacted my organization by simplifying SD-WAN deployments, allowing us to operate with fewer staff, as its integration with Juniper Mist AI takes on much of the workload, thereby offering reliable performance and stability without software issues."
"The biggest advantage of Juniper Session Smart Router that really stands out is its reliability and performance."
"Juniper Session Smart Router has positively impacted my organization because we have multi-cloud solutions that are extremely useful for our M365, Teams communication, Zoom communication, SAP applications, and Oracle-based applications."
"They provided us with a customized product according to our requirements."
"For telecom companies, I think zero-trust segmentation is the way to go because if you allow anything that you do not understand, then it becomes a problem."
"If there are multiple network connectivities in an organization, Meraki creates an AutoVPN. It creates a channel automatically."
"Everything is under one umbrella."
"I like the entire set of features and the analytics."
"Meraki SD-WAN has an easy installation."
"I'm not directly involved in SD-WAN monitoring and maintenance, but based on what I've heard from our infrastructure team, it's working well."
"With Meraki's centralized dashboard, we've streamlined configuration and monitoring across all sites in day 0 and day 1, reducing administrative overhead and minimizing potential human errors."
"Meraki SD-WAN saves costs for our customers and provides better connectivity."
"The solution is very stable."
 

Cons

"I found some weaknesses on their hardware. They are sometimes breaking very often."
"The UI of the SSR conductor is the main part where improvements can be done. Today, for every configuration step, you have to do a series of clicks. What we are missing there are wizards. For example, I have two applications, and I want one application to be prioritized against the other. In such a case, a wizard for assigning policies to a service without configuring each step by hand would be very helpful. There should be an overhaul of the GUI of the conductor. The functionality they have got in the Mist portal should be baked into the conductor itself. It would be really great, but as we all know, that won't happen."
"Juniper Session Smart Router could be better in terms of software performance."
"The UI of the SSR conductor is the main part where improvements can be done. Today, for every configuration step, you have to do a series of clicks."
"Regarding improvement, we still need to see what it can do."
"Juniper Session Smart Router should have a more user-friendly graphical interface because the user interface is complex, and some upgrade operations are sometimes difficult."
"Juniper Session Smart Router can be improved by simplifying onboarding for traditional network teams and providing better documentation for complex deployments, as well as improving the GUI for operational workflows and better migration tooling."
"Juniper Session Smart Router can improve the integration for Wi-Fi devices and add additional Sassy deployments."
"Meraki SD-WAN has to significantly improve the company's network performance."
"From the vice perspective, they just are not as robust as some of the other vendors."
"The solution must provide more security features."
"In Meraki SD-WAN, we have some limitations with the traffic shaping capabilities."
"With Meraki, it's more of a basic connectivity. It doesn't have all the feature sets that a Cisco SD-WAN solution has. It's limited."
"When there is an issue, I find it difficult to figure out what is going wrong because the logs do not provide as much information as solutions from HP."
"A run optimization feature is needed to reduce the bandwidth for any uploaded content."
"There are currently issues with NAT-Unfriendly situations on G4 networks that should be resolved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a simple bandwidth-based license and the orchestration comes bundled with the solution by default."
"We are currently renegotiating the offer for the licenses and the license bundle model. The license for an ISP has to be different from the license for an end customer. This is something we are currently renegotiating with Juniper, but, of course, the pricing for the licensing is always an issue when you want to get more customers."
"Any license you buy until January 2021 gets you an extra year for that purchase."
"From the perspective of the customer, the price is not terribly cost-effective."
"Meraki solutions come with a choice of several different subscription options including one year, three years, five years, seven years, and ten years."
"There are no licensing costs for the product subscription."
"The price can vary depending on the challenges that you need to address. When you look at the stability and reliability against the price, you absolutely get the value for the price."
"The pricing is fair, but if they can make it less it would be even more attractive."
"The solution offers yearly licenses and product lines or prices are readily available on their website."
"This solution is more expensive than competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
21%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise32
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Juniper Session Smart Router?
I personally did not do the pricing. I imagine it was okay because the company did purchase it. In a lot of instances, particularly as it pertains to healthcare, they don't want to spend too much. ...
What needs improvement with Juniper Session Smart Router?
I think the current Juniper focuses more on switching rather than routing, which is a weak point in the product. Currently, I and my customers have not utilized the Session Awareness feature of Jun...
What is your primary use case for Juniper Session Smart Router?
I have been running my own company and working with Juniper Session Smart Router for almost 10 to 12 years because Larsen & Toubro is my client who will use Juniper devices for switching and fi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Meraki SD-WAN?
When compared for the long run, it is reasonable, but for the short term, such as one year, it is costlier, especially compared to other OEMs such as FortiGate. If the license expires in FortiGate,...
What needs improvement with Meraki SD-WAN?
The pricing of Meraki SD-WAN depends compared to which vendors, because it's a bit pricey, so not all retail would go for it unless it's a big retail company, but it depends on your comparison. I u...
What is your primary use case for Meraki SD-WAN?
For Meraki SD-WAN, I always go with retail companies.
 

Also Known As

128T Networking Platform, 128 Technology SD-WAN, Juniper SSR Series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Revation Systems
École Jeannine Manuel
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, MikroTik, Juniper and others in Routers. Updated: October 2026.
920,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.