As technology advances, the difference between routers and switches has grown less clear. At heart, routers are Layer 3 (L3) devices that connect different networks. A common scenario is connecting a small business network to the Internet via DSL. Switches are L2 devices that interconnect client devices that share the same network. Basically, routers depend on computation to forward data based on complex algorithms, providing flexibility at the expense of throughput. Switches, in contrast, rely on mostly fixed hardware configurations to steer data at the highest possible rate. The current generation of routers usually come with Layer 2 switches, and many of today’s switches include Layer 3 routing capability. Routers developed by Cisco, the supplier of 90% of the world's routers, have advanced significantly in function and performance and Cisco now offers an extensive product line that includes routers designed to meet the requirements of users from households to nationwide service providers.
The most recent ISR routers released by Cisco offer the performance and built-in features to manage data voice and video as well as virtualization while also offering high availability, web-based management, easy extensibility, and advanced protection. These routers enable your company to establish a firm basis for an information network that can grow smoothly as you add new workers, establish extra sites, activate additional services, extend your network to clients and vendors, and build an an increasingly mobile user base. Progent’s Cisco certified CCIE network engineers offer fast and economical remote support to help your company to plan, deploy, administer, upgrade, and support Cisco's latest routers and can help you to support your older routers or move non-disruptively to Cisco’s current router products.
Cisco Routers Designed for Small Businesses and Remote Offices
Cisco’s routers for smaller businesses and branch offices provide low-cost and dependable entry-level alternatives that enable limited sets of users to have secure access to wide area networks. These fixed-configuration desktop routers include at minimum four switched Ethernet with Wi-Fi options and built-in firewall to provide enhanced security. Designed for easy setup, management, and troubleshooting, Cisco’s small business routers minimize ownership costs by lowering equipment and operational expenses. Progent’s remote troubleshooting experts have extensive backgrounds providing fast and economical IT assistance for small organizations to configure and support these devices, and Progent’s CCIE-certified network consultants can help your company to understand how these routers can increase the business value of your information system.
Cisco Small Business RV Series Routers
Cisco's affordably priced RV Series Routers are designed to provide small organizations with VPN capability that permits remote users to connect to a network via secure tunneling. Models in the Cisco RV Series VPN Routers can handle up to 100 IPsec VPN tunnels, include 4-, 8-, or 16-port Ethernet switches, have integrated firewalls that provide sophisticated encryption, and support browser-based setup for remote deployment and troubleshooting. All models accommodate 10/100 Ethernet and some can handle Gigabit Ethernet. Wired/Wireless versions are available. These routers do not support Cisco’s popular IOS software.
Cisco’s RV041 model Dual WAN VPN Router includes a 4-port 10/100 switch and can safely support as many as 50 branch offices or off-site workers via IPsec or Point-to-Point VPN. The G version can handle Gigabit Ethernet. The Cisco RV082 Dual WAN VPN Router has an 8-port 10/100 switch and can support 100 remote offices or online workers with full IPsec VPN tunneling. The Cisco RV016 Multi WAN VPN Router has 16 switched 10/100 Ethernet ports, supports 100 online connections, and lets up to seven ports to be set up for load balancing or for service provider failover to provide non-stop Internet access.
Cisco's more current products in the expanding family of Small Business RV Series Wired/Wireless Routers include the RV120W wired/Wireless-N Firewall with a 4-port Ethernet switch and support for as many as 10 VPN tunnels and 1000 concurrent sessions, the Cisco RV180W wired/Wireless-N VPN Router/Access Point with a 4-port Gigabit switch and support for 800 Mbps throughput and 10 IPsec VPN tunnels, the Cisco RV215W wired/Wireless-N Router with a 4-port switch and USB support for 3G/4G WAN connections, and the Cisco 325 RV325 Dual Gigabit WAN VPN Router with a built-in a 14-port Gigabit Ethernet switch and Dual Gigabit WAN ports for business continuity plus USB connections attaching 3G and 4G modems for WAN failover.
Cisco 800 Series ISR Routers
Cisco's comprehensive line of 800 Series ISR routers is made up of desktop, fanless devices intended for small organizations, branch offices, retail shops, telecommuters, and clients of broadband service providers. Many models in Cisco's 800 Series product line have been developed with various options over the course of many years. Cisco's 881 Series of ISR routers suggests the vast array of options available within Cisco's 800 Series product family. Models in Cisco's 881 router catalog can support converged media networks by providing IP voice and video, wireless and data in one integrated router and switch. Advanced security can include encryption, VPN, firewall, and URL filtering. For survivability, available features for Cisco 881 routers include duplicate wide area network links or support for wired broadband WAN links such as DSL as well as multiple different cellular 3G and 4G wireless WAN connections all on one desktop appliance.
The basic Cisco 881 includes a 4-port fast Ethernet managed switch that delivers 15 Mbps performance, support for up to 20 users, 2-port integrated PoE, and IPv6 support. Cisco's 881W ISR router includes 802.11g/n Wi-Fi. The 881 SRST router includes four FXS ports and 1 FXO port for public-switched-telephone-network (PSTN) fallback with Cisco SRST. With a Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) license, the Cisco 881 ISR router supports SIP trunking to replace legacy Primary Rate Interface (PRI) lines or FXO voice connectivity to a PSTN service provider. CUBE-based SIP trunks also connect offsite agents in Cisco Call Center environments.
Cisco Integrated Services Generation 2 Routers
Cisco's ISR Generation 2 routers are intended to offer satellite offices of enterprises with advanced video and voice applications, virtual networking, protection, and reliable WAN access. ISR G2 routers introduce a design that preserves prior investments in modules for older Integrated Services Routers and lowers future expenses by allowing field upgrades to additional modules as they are developed. In comparison to older Integrated Services Routers, Cisco's Integrated Services Generation 2 routers offer 2-7 times higher throughput, substantially more, and easier maintenance. All ISR G2 routers support Gbit switching and incorporate multi-core processors and multigigabit fabric for higher performance. Integrated Services Generation 2 routers also offer intelligent power control for improved energy conservation.
A key innovation with ISR G2 routers is the Cisco IOS Universal image which includes all of the IOS technology sets so that you can quickly authorize and activate extra features when desired without needing to acquire and transfer a new IOS image over to yourCisco router. Progent's group of Cisco-certified CCIE network consultants can provide world-class skills to assist your business to design, configure, and maintain multi-site installations of Cisco Integrated Services G2 routers that enhance satellite office productivity and cut the costs of expansion and maintenance.
1900 Series Integrated Services G2 Routers
Cisco 1941 and 1941W Integrated Services G2 routers include on-board encryption, optional IOS firewall, Cisco IOS intrusion prevention, and a maximum of 11 modular Ethernet switches. The Cisco 1941W ISR router provides an integrated 802.11n Wi-Fi access point that enables cordless connectivity to high-bandwidth data, voice, and video via MIMO technology that expands coverage for existing 802.11 clients. Connectivity options for the 1900 Series ISR G2 routers include T1/E1, xDSL, 3G, and GE.
In comparison to the older 1841 ISR router which they are able to replace, the 1900 Series Integrated Services G2 routers include 256 MB vs. 32 MB of CompactFlash storage as standard, and this can be increased to 4GB instead of 128 megabytes. Default dynamic RAM capacity is 256 megabytes compared to 128 and top dynamic RAM size is 2.25 GB vs. 384 megabytes. Unlike the 1841 router, the 1900 Series Integrated Services G2 routers feature a USB console instead of the outdated DB-9 connector and includes an add-in slot for the new ISM module rather than a slot for the previous and lower performance Advanced Integration Module. Unlike higher end ISR Generation 2 routers, the 1941 Series Integrated Services G2 routers do not support redundant power or slots for Packet Voice and fax DSP Modules.
Cisco 2900 ISR G2 Routers
2900 Integrated Services G2 Routers are available in four versions which correspond to the routers in Cisco’s popular 2800 router family. Cisco’s 2900 Integrated Services G2 routers offer integrated hardware encryption acceleration, voice and video ready Digital Signal Processor slots, optional Cisco IOS firewall, Cisco IOS intrusion prevention, call processing, and from 16 up to 50 modular Ethernet switchports. The on-board encryption circuitry provides IP Security and Secure Sockets Layer VPN tunneling for protected remote access and is dramatically higher performing than the Advanced Integration Modules available with Cisco 2800 series routers. The top-of-the-line Cisco 2951 ISR G2 router can handle 600 SIP sessions. Wired and wireless connectivity alternatives include T1/E1, T3/E3, ADSL and SDSL, plus 1 GigE.
2900 Integrated Services G2 routers accommodate Cisco’s Enhanced EtherSwitch Service Modules, offering high-throughput features that match the Catalyst 2960 and Catalyst 3650-E Series Switches. Compared to the older Cisco 2821 Integrated Services router that the Cisco 2921 Integrated Services G2 router is designed to replace, the 2921 router is shipped by default with 256 megabytes vs. 64 megabytes of CompactFlash memory and can be expanded to 4 gigabytes instead of 256 megabytes. Default dynamic RAM capacity is 512 megabytes vs. 256 MB and maximum DRAM capacity is 2.5 gigabytes instead of 1 GB.
3900 ISR G2 Routers
Cisco offers four models for the high-end 3900 Series ISR G2 router, the 3925, 3945, 3925E, and 3945E. These models offer the highest performance and add-in slot densities in Cisco’s ISR Generation 2 family and support fast DSPs for the most resource-intensive voice/video environments, accelerated on-board encryption, a broad range of connectivity options, up to 98 modular LAN switches, and up to 2,500 Session Initiation Protocol sessions. To preserve your IT investment, the 3900 Integrated Services G2 routers include the Cisco Services Performance Engine, a modular motherboard that can be replaced easily to improve throughput without forcing your business to purchase a new piece of equipment. As with other Integrated Services G2 routers, the 3900 family also preserves past investments by being compatible with the majority of the service modules from older Cisco ISR routers. For advanced availability, Cisco 3900 Series ISR G2 support dual integrated power supplies.
In comparison to the previous 3825 Integrated Services router that the Cisco 2921 ISR G2 router is designed to replace, the 3925 router is shipped by default with 256 MB instead of 64 megabytes of CompactFlash memory and can be loaded with up to 4GB vs. 256 MB. Standard dynamic RAM size is 1 GB vs. 256 megabytes and maximum dynamic RAM size is 4 gigabytes instead of 1 GB.
4000 Series ISR Routers
Cisco's 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers are compact modular and scalable routers designed for organizations with a large number of branches and remote workers requiring direct access to private data centers as well as public clouds across VPN tunnels and the Internet. Cisco's 4000 series provides the bandwidth needed for hybrid WAN environments to accommodate mobile users, Cloud-based services, and HD multimedia applications by utilizing wide area network optimization, deep packet inspection, and traffic-management technology. Models in Cisco's ISR 4000 Series run Cisco's IOS XE software, come in a 1RU or 2RU package, can handle as much as 2 Gbps of throughput, and can have up to 3 network interface module slots, 2 service module slots, 4 integrated Gigabit Ethernet switches, and 8 CPU core integrated server modules. ISR 4000 models support integrated Gigabit Ethernet, T1/E1, T3/E3, PR1, xDSL and other interfaces. For unified communications, Cisco's 400o ISR provides extensive edge support for SBC, branch telephony fault tolerance, and Time Division Multiplexing gateways.
The main difference between Cisco's 4400 and 4300 Series Routers is redundant power supply support in the 4400 Series, offering a greater degree of availability. The 4321 ISR Router has a 1 RU desktop form factor with two network interface modules (NIMs), delivers up to 100 Mbps throughput, and can handle 240 Digital Voice and Video Channels. The 4331 ISR Router has a 1 RU form factor and includes two network interface modules, delivers as much as 300 Mbps throughput, and can handle 360 Digital Voice and Video Channels. The 4351 model comes in a 2 RU package and includes three network interface modules, delivers as much as 400 Mbps throughput, and can handle 720 Digital Voice and Video Channels. The power-redundant 4431 model features a 2 RU form factor with three NIMs, delivers up to 1 Gbps throughput, and can handle 720 Digital Voice/Video Channels. Cisco's fault-tolerant 4431 model has a 2 RU package and includes three NIMs, offers as much as 2 Gbps performance, and supports 1200 Digital Voice/Video Channels.
Cisco's 1st Generation ISR Routers
Cisco's original ISR routers, with in excess of six million products in the field, are the industry's most popular technology for small businesses and enterprises with branch offices to ensure fast, safe, and reliable access to key applications. Progent's CCIE-certified network engineers are seasoned experts at delivering remote consulting, management, and troubleshooting support for Cisco 1800, 2800, and 3800 series Integrated Services Routers. Progent can help your company to upgrade to the current release of Cisco IOS Software with the least possible disruption to your network, assess the security vulnerability of your router setup, and assist business to migrate cost effectively to the latest releases of Cisco ISR Generation 2 routers when it is appropriate for your business.
Cisco 1800 Integrated Services Routers
The modular Cisco 1800 family of integrated services routers intelligently embed data and security within a single robust system for high-speed, scalable access to vital business programs. The Cisco 1800 Series design has been specifically developed to satisfy the requirements of small and midsize organizations, enterprise branch offices, and service provider-managed services environments for delivery of concurrent services at high speed. The integrated secure systems design of the Cisco 1800 Series offers optimum business agility and fast ROI.
The Cisco 1841 integrated services router provides substantial advantages relative to previous generations of Cisco 1700 Series devices by delivering more than a 5x throughput improvement plus built-in hardware encryption enabled by an available Cisco IOS Software security image. The Cisco 1841 integrated services router dramatically increases plug-in card slot performance as well as density compared to Cisco's 1700 Series while still maintaining support for more than 30 available Wide Area Network interface cards (WICs) and multiflex trunk cards (VWICs-for data only on the 1841 router). The 1841 device offers further improvement of Virtual Private Network throughput with an optional Virtual Private Network acceleration module; an intrusion prevention system (IPS) and firewall functions; compatibility with a broad array of interface requirements, such as support for optional switch ports; and enough performance and expansion slot density for ongoing network expansion and advanced applications.
Cisco 2800 Integrated Services Routers
Designed for small to midsize organizations and corporate satellite offices, the Cisco 2800 Series routers consists of four basic versions: the Cisco 2801, the Cisco 2811, the Cisco 2821, and the Cisco 2851 router. Cisco's 2800 Series routers offer significant additional value in comparison to older generations of Cisco routers at comparable price points by offering up to a five times performance increase, up to a tenfold increase in protection and voice performance, built-in service options, and dramatically enhanced slot performance and density while preserving support for the vast majority of the more than 90 popular expansion modules available currently for Cisco's 1700 Series, the Cisco 2600 Series, and the Cisco 3700 routers.
Cisco's 2800 offers an array of popular security functions such as a Cisco IOS Software Firewall, an IPS, IPsec Virtual Private Network, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) VPN, powerful application inspection and control, SSH Protocol Version 2.0, and Simple Network Management Protocol in one protected solution set. Additionally, by integrating security features within the router itself, Cisco can enable unique smart protection solutions other security devices can't, such as network admissions control for virus protection; Voice and Video Enabled VPN for quality-of-service (QoS) support when mixing voice, video, and Virtual Private Networks; DMVPN; Group Encrypted Transport; and Easy VPN for enabling more scalable and manageable VPN networks.
Organizations can utilize the 2800 router to deploy an integrated IP telephony network for as many as 96 IP telephones, and can safely deploy data, voice, and IP telephony on one router for their small-to-medium sized branch offices.
The Cisco 2800 router supports a built-in wireless access point for 802.11x wireless LAN access, wireless Hotspot capability for public wireless LANs, and infrastructure services for portable wireless LAN telephony and for high-density sites.
Cisco 3800 Integrated Services Routers
3800 integrated services routers are designed for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and enterprise branch locations to offer companies the top degree of network agility, speed, and intelligence. 3800 Series integrated services routers seamlessly integrate advanced network engineering, smart services, and protected enterprise communications into one resilient system. The Cisco 3800 Series routers ease deployment and management, lower network cost and complexity, and provide investment protection. The Cisco 3800 Series routers offer embedded security processing, excellent throughput and large memory capacity, and high-capacity interfaces that provide the performance, availability, and dependability required for scaling mission-critical protection, IP telephony, high-volume video, system monitoring, and web-based applications in the most demanding corporate networks. Engineered for speed, the The Cisco 3800 Series routers deliver multiple concurrent services up to wire-speed T3/E3 data rates.
The integrated services routing technology of the 3800 router is designed to integrate protection and voice processing with advanced wired and wireless services for rapid installation of new applications, including application layer operations, intelligent network services, and unified communications. The 3800 Series integrated services router meets the bandwidth requirements for multiple 100Mbps ports for each expansion slot, TDM connections, and integrated power sourcing to modules compatible with 802.3af Power over Ethernet, while also supporting the existing portfolio of interface modules. This enables continuing ROI by supporting network expansion or accommodating changes in technology as the latest services are added. By integrating the functions of several distinct appliances into a single compact unit, the 3800 Series router significantly reduces the expense and complexity of managing wide area networks.
Cisco's Midrange WAN Edge Routers and Carrier-class Routers
Cisco’s WAN edge and carrier routers offer enterprises with high-performance, protected headends to aggregate branch office and remote user traffic and to provide ISPs economical WAN edge solutions. Cisco’s midrange and carrier router portfolio features the Cisco 7600 Series Routers, the ASR 1000 ASR Routers, the ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers, and the Cisco Carrier Routing System.
Progent's nationwide team of Cisco CCIE certified network engineers have extensive backgrounds helping enterprise businesses and Internet service providers to design optimal deployments and seamless upgrades of Cisco's midrange and carrier-class routers. Progent's GIAC-certified information assurance consultants offer unbiased, third-party security inventory assessments, stealth penetration services and comprehensive SIEM solutions to help enterprises that use Cisco's WAN aggregation routers to comply with industry standards and government regulations for IT information security and incident reporting.
Cisco 7600 Series Routers
The 7600 Integrated Services router takes advantage of the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series architecture with an NEBS-3 compliant chassis, 256-Gbps crossbar switch fabric, and 30-Mpps switching performance. Fault tolerance is provided via logic and hardware redundancy as well as IOS Software functions. In addition, the 7600 offers a rich array of high-touch IP network services at optical speed through various Optical Services Modules (OSMs) enabled by Cisco proprietary Parallel Express Forwarding technology.
The Cisco 7609 Series provides the option to select a 256-Gbps Switch Fabric Module or a 32-Gbps data bus, which provide centralized switching performance of 30 Mpps or 15 Mpps respectively. If the Switch Fabric Module is used, the Cisco 7609 can also support distributed switching with throughput up to 168 Mpps by running the Cisco Catalyst 6500 16-port Gigabit Ethernet module, which is powered by the Distributed Forwarding Card (DFC) and the Switch Fabric Module.
The 7603 Series router provides only the 32-Gbps data bus version and provides 15 million packets per second performance. The 7603 Series does not support Cisco's distributed switching technology.
Cisco ASR 1000 Series WAN Edge Routers
Cisco’s ASR 1000 Series Aggregation Services line of routers is positioned in the center of Cisco’s midrange products that focus on aggregating services at the wide area network edge. Cisco’s ASR 1000 Aggregation Services routers offer a small footprint, multi-function solution for enterprises requiring branch office aggregation at multigigabit Ethernet performance. ASR 1000 Series WAN Edge routers incorporate an innovative architecture that mixes on-board acceleration with programmable flexibility in order to deliver a multitude of concurrent services without sacrificing dependable performance.
Cisco’s ASR 1000 WAN Edge routers feature Cisco’s new QuantumFlow Processor incorporating 40 purpose-built Packet Processing Engines (PPEs) that together can handle up to 160 simultaneous threads. This multi-processing structure, combined with hardware acceleration for every service, allows the top-of-the-line ASR 1006 Aggregation Services router to expand up to 128 hardware queues, 32K subscribers, 4,000 IP security tunnels at 10,000 sessions/second, and 2M Netflow records. This CPU capability allows Cisco’s ASR 1000 routers to deliver a wide variety of sophisticated services concurrently in high volume without suffering throughput degradation that might threaten adherence to SLAs. Examples of these advanced services include IOS Firewall, IPS, Network Address Translation, Flexible Packet Matching, and in-line deep packet inspection. The Cisco ASR 1000 also allows tiered traffic management for applying multiple levels of Quality of Service to a data packet in one pass, improving the user experience for resource-intensive IP voice and video applications.
Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers
Cisco's ASR 9000 Series Routers are designed as edge routers for service providers who need to support world-class HD multimedia services to residential, business, and mobile customers by providing non-stop operation, high performance, and application awareness. All models in the ASR 9000 line of Aggregation Services Routers run the IOS XR operating system, a distributed operating system designed for continuous availability. Performance of the ASR 9000 line of Aggregation Services Routers can scale up to 96 Tbps per system. the Cisco ASR 9000 portfolio of Routers support Gigabit Ethernet, 10 GE, and 100 GE and feature fully redundant fabric and power modules, power entry modules, and fan trays plus redundant control planes.
The Cisco ASR 9001 model is a provider-edge router that comes in a 6 RU form factor that delivers 120 Gbps of nonblocking fabric capacity. The ASR 9001 has two bays to accept adapters for 1 Gigabit, 10 Gigabit, and 40 Gigabit Ethernet. The base chassis incorporates four 10 GE SFP+ ports as well as ports for Stratum 1 clocking, building integrated timing supply (BITS), and management. The Cisco ASR 9904 Router comes in a 6 RU chassis and provides dense 10 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity in space-constrained sites. The 4-slot ASR 9094 can scale up to 4 Tbps of capacity in one box. The Cisco ASR 9912 Router has a 30 RU chassis with 10 line-card slots able to support 550 Gbps of throughput. The Cisco ASR 9912 Router incorporates 2 route CPUs as well as 6+1 Fabric Cards for N+1 redundancy.
The CRS Carrier Routing System
Cisco's Carrier Routing System (CRS) product line, running Cisco's IOS XR distributed software, offers service providers world-class performance and availability. The CRS portfolio was first released in 2004, has been steadily enhanced, and currently features the world's most popular multishelf core router system. To preserve existing investments in network infrastructure, new Carrier Routing System models are backward compatible with earlier products.
Available product families in the Carrier Routing System family are the CRS-1, CRS-3, and CRS-X Series. Every CRS series features single-shelf 4, 8, and 16 slot systems as well as multi-shelf versions. The Cisco CRS-1 product line is built on Cisco's Silicon Packet Processor technology and delivers up to 92 Tbps throughput. Routers in Cisco's CRS-3 Series use Cisco's QuantumFlow Array technology and can provide up to 322 Tbps. Cisco's CRS-X Routers use Cisco's CMOS photonics CPAK technology and scale to sustain an impressive 922 Tbps.
The Cisco Carrier Routing System Multichassis platforms can scale to support up to 72 line-card shelves that have the capability to deliver 400-Gigabit per second of uninterrupted performance per slot. Carrier Routing System Multichassis platforms can support up to 8 fabric shelves. Modular services cards (MSCs) and PLIMs are compatible across the complete Carrier Routing System product line.
Legacy Cisco Routers Supported by Progent's Consultants
Progent's CCIE consultants are experienced with legacy Cisco routers no longer offered by Cisco. Progent can show you how to maintain these routers and can also help you to rationalize and implement migrations to newer versions. Legacy Cisco routers supported by Progent include:
Cisco's discontinued 870 Series access routers are targeted for small offices with as many as 20 workers or for telecommuter locations where high-quality voice/video over IP and dependable access using backup WAN links are required. Cisco 870 Series access routers offer high performance for small offices plus tight security via features such as stateful Inspection Firewall, IPsec VPN, Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES) or Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) plus Dynamic Multipoint VPN and Tunnel-less Group Encrypted Transport (GETVPN), IPS, virus protection through Network Admission Control, and enforcement of secure access policies.
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