Routers are the centerpiece of connectivity infrastructure, securely steering network traffic from one network to another. Cisco makes the vast majority of the world's routers and has developed a comprehensive catalog that features routers designed to deliver the protection, throughput, and reliability characteristics required by companies of all sizes. Cisco routers feature support for redundancy, instant failover, and backup power for improved availability and network uptime. These capabilities help companies to lay a solid foundation for an IT network that is easy to grow as you support new users, establish new sites, deploy new services, give access to your system to clients and vendors, and support a more mobile workforce.

Cisco Routers for Small, Midsized and Enterprise Businesses
Cisco's integrated services routers provide an advanced solution that reduces network downtime and ensures connectivity to your most business-critical applications. Cisco's focus on integrating new infrastructure services with performance allows businesses to create WANs that are smarter, more resilient, and more dependable. For businesses of any size who require quick, secure access to today's mission-critical programs plus a foundation for continuing expansion, Cisco routers provide a product line engineered for secure, fast transmission of concurrent data traffic. Cisco's latest routers incorporate security and voice services into a single routing solution that speeds application installation and reduces operating expenses and complexity.

SB 100 Secure Broadband Routers
The Cisco SB 100 line of broadband routers represents an affordable choice for data-only traffic in small business customers with five or fewer workers. Popular SB 100 versions include ADSL, ADSL, or an Ethernet wide area network interface with a 4-connection 10/100 Ethernet switch. Each SB 100 provides secure connectivity with built-in stateful firewall and support for MPLS-based VPNs. In addition, simple setup utility, Cisco Router and Security Device Manager, permits users to configure the router and its built-in firewall, and remote administration capabilities in IOS Software permit easy installation and centralized support.

Cisco SB 100 Secure Broadband Routers have been replaced by Cisco's 850 and 870 Series Integrated Services Routers. Progent's Cisco-certified support experts can help your business to maintain your existing SB 100 routers and show you how to migrate to more current products.

Cisco 800 Family Routers with Integrated Services
Cisco's 870 and 850 Integrated Services Routers are fixed-configuration routers that offer secure, concurrent services over fast connections in small remote offices, telecommuter, and small business sites.

Cisco 850 Series access routers are designed for small offices, recommended for up to 10 workers or for telecommuter sites where only secure and affordable connectivity is needed. 850 Series access routers deliver secure connectivity with Stateful Inspection Firewall and IP security VPN features for small LANs, 4-connection 10/100 Ethernet switch, protected wireless option with a fixed antenna, plus easy setup and integration and remote administration features via Web-based tools and Cisco IOS Software.

Cisco 870 Series routers are designed for small offices, well-suited for up to 20 users or for teleworker locations where advanced voice/video over IP and dependable access utilizing backup broadband connections are needed, in addition to secure connections. 870 Series access routers offer high throughput for WAN access in small workgroups as well as tight security through capabilities such as Firewall, IP Security Virtual Private Networks, Triple Data Encryption Standard or AES plus Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN) and GETVPN, IPS, and virus protection using NAC and enforcement of secure connection policies.

Cisco 870 routers also provide advanced quality of service (QoS), 4-connection 10/100 Ethernet switch with VLAN support, secure WLAN 802.11b/g option with multiple antennas, simple setup and deployment by means of Web-enabled utilities and remote management capabilities via IOS Software, and PoE support for IP phone sets or external wireless access points.

1800 Series Routers
The scalable Cisco 1800 family of routers incorporate data and protection within one resilient solution for fast, expandable delivery of strategic business programs. The Cisco 1800 Series architecture has been specifically developed to satisfy the needs of small and midsize organizations, branch offices, and ISP-managed services applications for access to concurrent services at high-speed performance. The integrated services systems architecture of the Cisco 1800 Series routers offers maximum versatility and fast ROI.

Designed for protected data connectivity, the Cisco 1841 router provides significant additional value in comparison to previous generations of 1700 Series devices by bringing more than a 5x performance improvement and integrated hardware-based encryption activated by an optional Cisco IOS Software protection image. The 1841 device dramatically increases plug-in card slot performance and capacity over the Cisco 1700 Series while still maintaining compatibility with over 30 available Wide Area Network interface cards (WICs) and multiflex trunk cards (voice/WICs (VWICs)-for data only). The 1841 router provides further improvement of Virtual Private Network speed via an available VPN acceleration add-in; an intrusion prevention system and firewall functions; compatibility with a wide range of connectivity needs, including support for integrated switch ports; plus sufficient speed and expansion slot density for ongoing network growth and next-generation applications.

2800 Series Integrated Services Routers
Intended for small to midsize businesses (SMBs) and corporate satellite offices, the Cisco 2800 Series consists of four platforms: the 2801 router, the Cisco 2811, the Cisco 2821, and the Cisco 2851. Cisco's 2800 Series provides significant added value in comparison to older generations of Cisco routers at similar price points by delivering as much as a 5x throughput increase, as much as a 10 times improvement in security and voice speed, integrated service options, and dramatically enhanced plug-in slot performance and capacity while maintaining compatibility with most of the over 90 popular expansion modules in use today for the 1700 Series, the Cisco 2600 Series, and Cisco's 3700 routers.

The Cisco 2800 Series can deliver multiple high-quality concurrent services at high speed up to multiple T1/E1/xDSL links. 2800 Series routers provide embedded rapid encryption and on-the-motherboard voice digital-signal-processor (DSP) add-in slots; intrusion prevention system and firewall capability; optional integrated call processing and voice message management; high-capacity interfaces for a wide array of tethered and untethered access options; and enough performance and slot density to handle further system growth needs and new applications.

Cisco's 2800 Series router offers a range of common security functions such as a Cisco IOS Software Firewall, an IPS, IPSec Virtual Private Network, SSL Virtual Private Network, advanced application inspection and control, SSH Protocol Version 2.0, and Simple Network Management Protocol in a single secure solution. Also, by incorporating security features within the router itself, Cisco can provide special smart protection solutions other security devices can't, such as network admissions control for virus defense; Voice and Video Enabled VPN for quality-of-service enforcement when combining voice, video, and VPN; Dynamic Multipoint VPN; Group Encrypted Transport; Virtual Private Networking; and Easy Virtual Private Networks for supporting increasingly expandable and manageable VPN environments.

Businesses can use the 2800 Series to deploy an integrated IP telephony solution for up to 96 IP telephones, and can securely combine data, voice, and IP telephony on one platform for their small-to-medium sized satellite offices.

The 2800 Series router incorporates an integrated access point for 802.11x wireless LAN access, Wi-Fi Hotspot services for public wireless networks, and network services for cordless wireless LAN telephony and for larger locations.

3800 Series Routers
3800 Series integrated services routers are engineered for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and enterprise branch locations to provide companies the highest degree of network versatility, performance, and intelligence. The Cisco 3800 Series integrated services routers smoothly integrate the latest technologies, adaptive services, and protected enterprise communications into a single resilient system. The Cisco 3800 Series routers ease deployment and management, lower network cost and complexity, and provide investment protection. The Cisco 3800 integrated services routers feature embedded security intelligence, fast throughput and large memory capacity, and high-density interfaces that provide the performance, availability, and reliability required for building mission-critical protection, IP telephony, business video, network monitoring, and web-based applications in even the most competitive corporate environments. Engineered for performance, the 3800 Series routers provide multiple simultaneous services up to wired T3/E3 data rates.

The proprietary routing architecture of the 3800 Series router is engineered to embed and integrate protection and voice handling with the latest wireline and wireless services for rapid deployment of new services, including application layer operations, intelligent network services, and converged communications. The Cisco 3800 Series integrated services router supports the throughput requirements for several Fast Ethernet interfaces per slot, time-division multiplexing interconnections, and integrated power sourcing to modules compatible with 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE), while also supporting the traditional selection of interfaces. This ensures continuing return on investment by allowing network expansion or adapting to changes in technology as new services are added. By combining the capabilities of several separate appliances into one compact unit, the 3800 router significantly lowers the expense and complexity of administering remote networks.

Cisco 7200 VXR Series Routers
The7200 VXR router delivers exceptional speed, flexibility, and scalability in a small chassis with a wide range of configuration options. With processing throughput as high as 2 million packets / second, port and service adapters ranging from NxDS0 to GbE, plus OC-3 along with an unparalleled number of high-touch IP services, the 7200 VXR Series Integrated Services router is the preferred services aggregation wide- and metropolitan-area network edge device for enterprises and service providers.

The 7200 VXR Series Integrated Services router provides services aggregation by supporting up to 16K Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) sessions per device, mixed-media support via TDM-enabled VXR frame and voice interface adapters, direct IP-interconnections, and IP Security virtual private networking scalable to 5K tunnels per chassis.

The 7200 VXR Series Integrated Services router combines into a single platform services formerly performed by separate devices. Through this consolidation, the Cisco 7200 VXR Integrated Services router offers a single, affordable platform that accommodates dense LAN and WAN modules plus high-speed services aggregation including Point-to-Point Protocol, RFC 1483 termination, and Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol; digital T1/E1 time-division multiplexer trunk termination for video; high-density multichannel T3/E3 and T1/E1 with integrated channel service unit/data service unit (CSU/DSU); ATM, PoS, and Dynamic Packet Transport access; ATM IMA for mixed media; and low-volume Layer 2 Ethernet switching.

Cisco 7600 Integrated Services Routers
The 7600 Integrated Services router takes advantage of the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series infrastructure with an NEBS-3 chassis, 256-Gbps crossbar switch fabric, and 30-Mpps switching performance. High availability is implemented via logic and hardware redundancy plus IOS Software functions. In addition, the Cisco 7600 Series router provides a broad array of high-touch IP network services at optical speed via various OSMs powered by Cisco proprietary PXF technology.

The 7609 Series router has the option to select a 256-Gbps SFM or a 32-Gbps data bus, which provide switching performance of 30 Mpps or 15 Mpps each. If the SFM is used, the 7609 can in addition support distributed switching with throughput up to 168 million packets per second by running the Catalyst 6500 16-port Gigabit Ethernet network module, which is powered by the DFC and the SFM.

The Cisco 7603 has only the 32-Gbps data bus option and provides 15 Mpps centralized switching performance. The 7603 router does not support distributed switching.

Legacy Routers Supported by Progent's Experts
Progent's Cisco certified consultants are experienced with legacy Cisco routers no longer available from Cisco. Progent can show you how to maintain these routers and can also assist you to prepare for and carry out upgrades to newer models. Popular Cisco routers maintained by Progent include: