Meter is a Network as a Service (NaaS) startup. The company recently announced $35 million in new funding, which brings total investments to $85 million since the company’s founding in 2015. The Packet Pushers were recently briefed by Meter. Here’s my notes from the briefing.
Meter builds its own access switches, wireless APs, and security appliances and then installs and operates them for customers. What does Meter mean by “builds its own”? The company says it has written its own operating system and firmware. It has also written its own dashboard and applications. It designs its own hardware and then works with ODMs to produce the final product.
Meter’s switches offer 10G ports and support PoE and PoE+. Its APs currently support Wi-Fi 6, which is a generation behind Wi-Fi 6e. Meter says it will roll out Wi-Fi 7 APs once the standard is ratified.
What An Engagement Looks Like
Meter targets companies with challenging physical environments that need Internet connectivity and a local network. An engagement with Meter tends to start with procuring an Internet connection. Meter has a service that handles ISP procurement at customer sites in the United States and Canada. Meter developed an application that shows available service providers, service offerings, and pricing options at a given site. Once the customer chooses the provider, Meter manages procurement and installation. It also monitors SLAs and handles support calls with ISPs.
Then Meter conducts a site survey and designs the network based on the site and customer requirements. When the design is complete, it brings in the requisite gear, deploys and cables it all, and turns it up. In a brownfield environment where a customer already has equipment from a competitor (think Cisco Meraki, HPE Aruba, and others) Meter says it will buy out a competitor’s gear (i.e. give the customer a credit) and replace it all with Meter’s gear.
Note that Meter won’t operate in a mixed environment (for example, Meter’s switches with someone else’s APs). You’re either all in on Meter’s gear or no deal.
Network Management: Part Service, Part Partnership
Once Meter’s equipment and up and running, Meter then handles day-to-day management tasks. That means things like software updates, responding to alerts, adjusting to changing performance requirements, and installing new hardware.
But Meter isn’t out to replace network engineers. A customers’ network engineers have access to Meter’s equipment via a dashboard (no CLI or API options yet) and can perform common tasks such as adding and changing VLANs, adding users and devices, and so on. Meter says to think of its service like AWS: you don’t have to worry about the hardware or network OS issues, but you can still configure network devices to your heart’s content.
Security Features
Meter’s security appliance includes a stateful firewall and IPSec VPN. It can also perform URL filtering, but it never breaks TLS connections. That’s by design. While it means the security appliance can’t inspect payloads for malware or the exfiltration of sensitive data, Meter says its approach preserves customer privacy. The company offers its own VPN client for remote workers, and partners with Cloudflare on DNS security.
The security appliance is a modest piece of hardware. It’s built on an Intel server and can support 10G WAN links.
Quick Take
Meter competes with traditional network vendors including Cisco, HPE Aruba, Juniper Networks, Extreme Networks, and others. The company targets sectors including manufacturing, retail, and education.
While its product specs aren’t going to wow anyone, equipment isn’t Meter’s compelling differentiator. It differentiates with its soup-to-nuts approach to NaaS. From ISP procurement to racking and cabling your gear to ongoing network management, Meter makes a good pitch for organizations that need connectivity, and could also use a partner to help deploy and operate the network.
