Meraki MS450-12-HW | Meraki MS450 12-Port 40G Switch, 2x 100G QSFP28

Q: What is the MS450-12-HW designed for?
A: The MS450-12-HW is a 40G aggregation switch built for high-bandwidth campus and data center cores. It connects up to 12 MS355 access switches with 40G fiber uplinks and scales to core infrastructure using dual 100G QSFP28 ports. It's ideal for multi-gigabit environments requiring terabit-class performance.

Q: Does the MS450-12-HW support stacking?
A: Yes, the MS450-12-HW features two dedicated 100G QSFP28 stacking ports providing up to 400 Gbps of stacking bandwidth. You can stack up to eight switches for high-availability deployments with redundant architectures and simplified management.

Q: What Layer 3 routing protocols does the MS450-12-HW support?
A: The MS450-12-HW is a Layer 3 managed switch supporting static routing, OSPF dynamic routing, and VRRP for warm spare failover. It provides full inter-VLAN routing capabilities and is designed for aggregation layer deployment with robust routing features.

Q: Can the uplink ports operate at 40G speeds?
A: No, the two 100G QSFP28 uplink ports are rated for 100Gbps use cases only and do not support downshifting to 40Gbps. They are dedicated uplinks separate from the two 100G QSFP28 stacking ports.

Q: Does this switch require a Meraki license to operate?
A: Yes, all Meraki hardware requires a valid Enterprise license subscription to pass traffic and be managed via the Meraki cloud dashboard. Licenses are sold separately in 1, 3, 5, 7, and 10-year terms and are mandatory for operation.