Routers are the core of network architecture, securely steering data packets from one network to another. Cisco Systems makes the vast majority of the industry's routers and has created a broad catalog that features routers designed to deliver the security, performance, and reliability features needed by businesses of all sizes. Cisco routers feature support for redundancy, instant failover, and redundant power for enhanced fault tolerance and network uptime. These capabilities allow businesses to lay a solid structure for an IT network that allows you to expand as you support new workers, establish new offices, install new services, extend your network to clients and partners, and support an increasingly mobile user base.

Cisco Routers for Small, Mid-size and Large Businesses
Cisco's routers provide an advanced solution that reduces network downtime and ensures connectivity to the most vital applications. Cisco's concentration on combining innovative services with high speed enables companies to build networks that are more intelligent, more resilient, and more dependable. For businesses of any size that require fast, protected access to their mission-critical programs plus a strong basis for future growth, Cisco routers offer a product line designed for secure, wire-speed transmission of simultaneous and video traffic. Cisco's latest routers embed protection and voice support into an integrated routing solution that speeds application installation and lowers maintenance expenses and hassle.

Cisco SB 100 Series Routers
The Cisco SB 100 line of routers offers an economical Cisco router for data-only networks in small offices with five or fewer workers. SB 100 versions include ADSL, ADSL, or an Ethernet WAN version with a four-connection 10/100 switch. Every SB 100 offers secure connectivity with integrated firewall and support for MPLS-based VPNs. Also, simple configuration tool, Cisco Router and Security Device Manager, allows you to set up the router and its built-in firewall, while remote administration features in Cisco IOS Software facilitate easy deployment and centralized management.

Cisco Small Business 100 Routers have been superseded by Cisco's 850 and 870 routers. Progent's network support experts can help your business to manage your current SB 100 devices and help you upgrade to more advanced routers.

Cisco 800 Family Routers
The Cisco 870 and Cisco 850 Series Routers are fixed-configuration routers that provide protected, simultaneous services over fast connections in small off-site offices, telecommuter, and small company sites.

Cisco 850 Series routers are targeted at small networks, ideal for as many as 10 users or for teleworker environments where simply protected and economical connectivity is needed. Cisco 850 Series routers offer safe access with firewall and IPsec Virtual Private Network support for small offices, four-connection 10/100 Ethernet switch, secure WiFi option with a fixed antenna, and easy setup and deployment and off-site administration capabilities via Web-based tools and Cisco IOS Software.

Cisco 870 Series routers are targeted for small networks, recommended for as many as 20 workers or for teleworker sites where advanced voice/video over IP and resilient connectivity using backup broadband links are demanded, as well as secure connections. Cisco 870 Series routers deliver excellent performance for broadband connectivity in small offices as well as tight security via capabilities such as stateful Inspection Firewall, IP Security (IPsec) VPNs, Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES) or AES as well as Dynamic Multipoint VPN and Tunnel-less Group Encrypted Transport, an intrusion prevention system, and virus protection using Network Admission Control (NAC) and policing of safe connection policies.

Cisco 870 Series routers also offer industry-leading quality of service, 4-connection 10/100 managed switch with VLAN support, protected WLAN 802.11b/g option with use of multiple antennas, simple setup and deployment through Web-enabled utilities and off-site administration features via IOS Software, and Power over Ethernet (PoE) support for IP phones or external wireless access points.

Cisco 1800 Series Integrated Services Routers
The Cisco 1800 Series of integrated services routers combine data and protection into a single robust system for high-speed, expandable access to mission-critical business applications. The Cisco 1800 Series router design has been specifically developed to handle the requirements of small-to-medium-sized organizations, branch offices, and ISP-managed services environments for access to simultaneous services at wire-speed throughput. The integrated secure systems architecture of the Cisco 1800 Series routers delivers optimum business agility and investment protection.

Engineered for safe data connectivity, the Cisco 1841 integrated services router offers significant additional value in comparison to older generations of Cisco 1700 Series routers by delivering more than a 5x throughput improvement plus integrated hardware-based encryption enabled by an optional IOS Software protection image. The 1841 device dramatically increases interface card slot throughput and capacity over Cisco's 1700 Series while maintaining support for over 30 existing WAN interface cards (WICs) and multiflex trunk cards (voice/WICs (VWICs)-for data only on the 1841 router). The Cisco 1841 integrated services router offers additional improvement of VPN speed via an available Virtual Private Network acceleration module; IPS and firewall functions; compatibility with a broad array of interface needs, including support for optional integrated switch ports; plus enough performance and slot density for future network expansion and advanced applications.

Cisco 2800 Series Routers
Designed for small to midsize businesses and enterprise satellite offices, the Cisco 2800 Series routers comprises several platforms: the Cisco 2801, the Cisco 2811, the 2821, and the Cisco 2851 router. Cisco's 2800 Series provides substantial additional value vs. older models of Cisco routers at similar prices by delivering up to a 5x performance improvement, up to a 10x increase in protection and voice performance, embedded service options, and radically improved slot speed and capacity while preserving support for most of the more than 90 existing expansion modules available currently for Cisco's 1700, the Cisco 2600 Series, and Cisco's 3700 Series devices.

Cisco's 2800 Series provide a variety of high-quality concurrent services at wire speed up to multiple T1/E1/xDSL links. 2800 Series offer embedded rapid encryption and internal voice DSP add-in slots; intrusion prevention system and firewall functions; optional internal call handling and voice message support; high-capacity interfaces for a broad range of tethered and untethered access requirements; and sufficient performance and slot capacity for future network expansion requirements and new applications.

The Cisco 2800 offers an array of popular security features including an IOS Software Firewall, an intrusion prevention, IPSec VPN, SSL Virtual Private Network, advanced application inspection and control, SSH Protocol Version 2.0, and SNMPv3 in one protected solution. Additionally, by integrating security features within the router, Cisco can provide unique intelligent protection functions other security appliances can't, such as network admissions control (NAC) for antivirus protection; Voice and Video Enabled VPN (V3PN) for QoS enforcement when mixing voice, video, and VPN; Dynamic Multipoint VPN (DMVPN); Group Encrypted Transport (GET); VPN; and Easy VPN for supporting increasingly scalable and manageable VPN environments.

Organizations can use the 2800 Series to deploy a converged IP telephony network for as many as 96 IP phones, and can safely deploy data, voice, and IP telephony on a single router for their small-to-medium sized branch offices.

The Cisco 2800 Series router supports a built-in wireless access point for wireless network connectivity, wireless Hotspot services for shared public wireless LANs, and network services for portable WLAN telephony and for high-density locations.

Cisco 3800 Integrated Services Routers
3800 Series integrated services routers are engineered for small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and corporate satellite offices to provide companies the top levels of network agility, speed, and intelligence. 3800 Series routers transparently integrate advanced technologies, smart services, and secure enterprise communications into one robust platform. The Cisco 3800 Series routers ease deployment and management, lower network cost and complexity, and provide investment protection. The Cisco 3800 Series routers offer internal security processing, excellent throughput and high memory capacity, and high-density interfaces that provide the performance, availability, and dependability necessary for scaling mission-critical protection, IP telephony, high-volume video, network monitoring, and Web programs in even the most competitive enterprise environments. Engineered for performance, the Cisco 3800 Series routers deliver multiple concurrent services up to wired T3/E3 data rates.

The integrated services routing technology of the Cisco 3800 router is designed to embed and integrate protection and voice handling with advanced wireline and wireless support for fast deployment of new applications, including application layer functions, smart network services, and converged communications. The Cisco 3800 Series router meets the bandwidth requirements for multiple Fast Ethernet ports per expansion slot, TDM interconnections, and integrated power sourcing to modules supporting 802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE), while also supporting the traditional portfolio of interface modules. This enables ongoing return on investment by supporting network expansion or accommodating changes in technology as new services are deployed. By combining the functions of multiple separate devices into one compact device, the 3800 router significantly reduces the expense and hassle of administering remote networks.

Cisco 7200 VXR Routers
The7200 VXR router offers high levels of speed, modularity, and expandability in a small chassis with a broad selection of deployment options. With processing throughput as high as two million packets per second, adapters spanning from NxDS0 to 1 GigE, and OC-3 along with an unparalleled number of high-volume IP services, the Cisco 7200 VXR Series router is the preferred broadband aggregation WAN/MAN edge solution for enterprises and service providers.

The 7200 VXR router features services aggregation by handling up to 16K PPP sessions per chassis, mixed-media integration via time-division multiplexer-enabled VXR frame and voice interface adapters, direct IP-interconnections, and IPSec virtual private networking expandable to 5K tunnels per device.

The 7200 VXR Integrated Services router combines into a compact chassis functions previously performed by multiple appliances. Through this consolidation, the Cisco 7200 VXR router offers a single, affordable platform that accommodates dense network modules plus high-speed services aggregation including PPP, RFC 1483 termination, and L2TP tunneling; digital T1/E1 time-division multiplexer (TDM) trunk termination for mixed media; multichannel T3/E3 and T1/E1 with built-in channel service unit/data service unit; ATM, Packet over SONET (PoS), and Dynamic Packet Transport access; ATM Inverse Multiplexing over ATM for video; and light-volume Layer 2 Ethernet switching.

7600 Series Routers
The 7600 Series router benefits from the Cisco Catalyst 6500 infrastructure by using an NEBS-3 box, 256-Gbps crossbar switch fabric, and 30-Mpps switching speed. Fault tolerance is implemented through logic and hardware redundancy as well as Cisco IOS Software functions. In addition, the Cisco 7600 Series offers a broad array of high-touch IP network services at optical rates through a variety of OSMs powered by Cisco patented Parallel Express Forwarding technology.

The Cisco 7609 Series has the choice to select a 256-Gbps Switch Fabric Module or a 32-Gbps bus, which provide switching performance of 30 Mpps or 15 Mpps each. If the SFM is deployed, the Cisco 7609 can in addition allow distributed switching with throughput up to 168 million packets per second by running the Catalyst 6500 16-port Gbit Ethernet LAN card, which is powered by the DFC Card and the SFM.

The 7603 router has exclusively the 32-Gbps data bus option and provides 15 million packets per second performance. The Cisco 7603 does not offer distributed switching.

Older Routers Maintained by Progent's Experts
Progent's Cisco certified engineers are familiar with legacy Cisco routers no longer available from Cisco. Progent can help you to support these older routers and can also help you to prepare for and carry out upgrades to newer versions. Popular Cisco routers supported by Progent include: