As computer technology advances, the difference between a router and a switch is becoming blurred. Fundamentally, routers are Layer 3 (L3) devices designed to connect networks with one another. A common scenario is connecting an office Ethernet network to the Internet via DSL. Switches are L2 devices that interconnect various devices that share the same network. Basically, routers rely on processors to forward traffic using complex algorithms, offering flexibility at the expense of speed. Switches, by comparison, rely on mostly fixed hardware designs to forward data at the fastest feasible rate. Today's routers ordinarily incorporate L2 switches, and many modern switches have some Layer 3 routing capability. Routers offered by Cisco, the source of 90% of the industry's routers, have improved dramatically in capability and speed and Cisco now offers an extensive product line that includes routers built to meet the requirements of users ranging from households to nationwide ISPs.
The most recent ISR routers released by Cisco have the speed and integrated functionality to support data voice and video as well as virtual environments while at the same time providing fault tolerance, remote management, easy extensibility, and enhanced security and compliance. Cisco's ISR routers enable your company to establish a firm basis for an IT network that can grow smoothly as you add more employees, establish new offices, activate new services, give access to your system to customers and partners, and build an an increasingly mobile user base. Progent’s Cisco certified CCIE network consultants can provide fast and economical online support to assist your company to select, configure, manage, upgrade, and troubleshoot Cisco's latest router technology and can help you to maintain your older routers or move efficiently to Cisco’s current router solutions.
Cisco Routers Designed for Small Businesses and Branch Offices
Cisco’s routers for small organizations and remote offices offer affordable and dependable entry-level solutions that allow small sets of workers to share secure connectivity to wide area networks. These fixed-configuration desktop routers include at minimum four Ethernet switches with Wi-Fi options and integrated firewall to provide advanced security. Built for easy installation, administration, and support, Cisco’s entry-level routers reduce TCO by cutting acquisition and maintenance expenses. Progent’s online troubleshooting specialists have in-depth experience providing immediate and affordable IT assistance for small businesses to set up and maintain these devices, and Progent’s CCIE network consultants can help you to determine ways these routers can increase the business value of your IT system.
Cisco Small Business RV Series Routers
Cisco's economical RV Series Routers are designed to offer small businesses with VPN technology that allows telecommuters and mobile workers to connect to a network securely. Models in the RV Series VPN Routers can support from five to 100 VPN tunnels, incorporate 4-, 8-, or 16-port Ethernet switches, come with integrated firewalls that provide advanced data encryption, and allow web-based configuration for remote set up and management. All RV Series devices support fast Ethernet and several models support Gigabit Ethernet. Both wired and wireless versions are available. These routers do not incorporate Cisco’s popular IOS control software.
The Cisco RV041 model Dual WAN VPN Router includes a 4-port 10/100 switch and can securely support as many as 50 branch offices or online workers through Internet Protocol Security or PPTP VPN. Cisco's RV042G can handle Gigabit Ethernet. The Cisco RV082 model VPN Router has an 8-port 10/100 Ethernet switch and can support as many as 100 remote offices or online workers via full IPsec VPN. Cisco's RV016 Multi WAN VPN Router features 16 switched 10/100 Ethernet ports, supports 100 remote connections, and allows up to seven ports to be set up for traffic load balancing or for ISP redundancy to ensure zero downtime Internet connectivity.
Cisco's newer products in the expanding selection of Small Business RV Series Routers include the RV120W wired/Wireless-N VPN with a 4-port 10/100 Ethernet switch and support for 10 IPsec VPN connections, the RV180W Wireless-N Multifunction VPN Router/Access Point with a 4-port Gigabit Ethernet switch and support for 12000 Concurrent sessions and 10 IPsec VPN tunnels, the RV215W Wireless Router with a 4-port switch and USB support for WAN connections, and Cisco's 325 RV325 WAN VPN Router that includes a built-in a 14-port Gigabit switch and redundant Gbit Ethernet WAN ports for load balancing and business continuity plus USB ports using 3G and 4G modems for broadband failover.
Cisco 800 Line of ISR Routers
Cisco's extensive portfolio of 800 Series ISR routers is made up of desktop, fanless devices designed and priced for small organizations, branch locations, retail shops, telecommuters, and clients of ISPs. Many models in the 800 product line have been developed with many options for many years. The 881 line of ISR routers suggests the wide array of options available within Cisco's 800 Series product family. Various models in Cisco's 881 Series router catalog can enable unified media environments by delivering voice and video, wireless and data in a single integrated router and switch. Advanced data protection can include encryption, VPN, firewall, and URL filtering. For business continuity, available features for 881 routers include duplicate wide area network connections or support for wired high-speed WAN connections like DSL plus multiple 3G and 4G wireless WAN connections all built into a single desktop appliance.
The basic Cisco 881 router has a 4-port fast Ethernet managed switch that delivers 15 Mbps throughput, the ability to handle up to 20 users, 2-port integrated Power over Ethernet, and IPv6 compatibility. The Cisco 881W router supports 802.11g/n Wi-Fi. The 881 SRST router features four FXS ports and 1 FXO port for public-switched-telephone-network (PSTN) failover with Cisco Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST). With a Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) license, Cisco's 881 ISR router allows SIP trunk connectivity to replace legacy Primary Rate Interface (PRI) lines or foreign exchange-office (FXO) voice connectivity to a PSTN carrier. SIP trunks also support offsite call agents in Cisco Call Center environments.
Cisco Integrated Services G2 Routers
Cisco's ISR Generation 2 routers are intended to provide satellite offices of enterprises with advanced collaboration, virtual networking, protection, and dependable WAN access. Integrated Services G2 routers introduce an architecture that preserves prior investments in modules for older Integrated Services Routers and reduces down-the-line expenses by permitting field upgrades to additional modules when they are developed. Compared to older ISR routers, Cisco's ISR G2 routers feature 2-7 times more performance, substantially greater expandability, and more affordable support. All Integrated Services Generation 2 routers offer Gbit switching and include multi-core CPUs and multigigabit fabric for higher throughput. ISR G2 routers also offer intelligent power control for improved energy conservation.
A notable innovation with Integrated Services Generation 2 routers is the IOS Universal image which contains all of the IOS technology sets so that you can quickly authorize and activate extra services as required without having to download and copy a new IOS image to yourCisco router. Progent's group of Cisco-certified CCIE network engineers can provide proven expertise to help you to design, implement, and maintain multi-site deployments of Cisco Integrated Services G2 routers that enhance branch office efficiency and reduce the price of upgrades and maintenance.
1900 ISR G2 Routers
1900 Series ISR G2 routers offer accelerated hardware encryption, optional Cisco IOS firewall, Cisco IOS intrusion prevention, and a maximum of 11 modular LAN switches. The 1941W router includes an integrated WiFi access point that enables wireless access to high-speed data, voice, and video applications via MIMO technology that improves the range of current 802.11 clients. Connectivity options for the Cisco 1941 and 1941W ISR G2 routers include T1/E1, ADSL/SDSL, 3G, and GE.
In comparison to the previous 1841 ISR router which they are designed 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 compared to 128 megabytes. Default DRAM capacity is 256 MB instead of 128 MB and maximum dynamic RAM size is 2.25 GB compared to 384 MB. In contrast to the 1841 router, the 1900 Series Integrated Services G2 routers include a USB console in place of the older DB-9 connector and includes an add-in slot for the recently introduced ISM module instead of a slot for the older and lower performance AIM module. Unlike higher end ISR G2 routers, the Cisco 1941 and 1941W Integrated Services G2 routers do not allow redundant power or slots for Packet Voice and fax DSP Modules.
Cisco 2900 Series ISR G2 Routers
Cisco 2900 Series Integrated Services G2 Routers are available in four models which correspond to the models in Cisco’s popular 2800 router family. Cisco’s 2901, 2911, 2921, and 2951 ISR G2 routers include on-board hardware encryption acceleration, voice and video ready DSP slots, optional Cisco IOS firewall, IOS intrusion prevention, voice mail, and from 16 to 50 Ethernet switchports. The integrated encryption circuitry provides IP Security and SSL VPN for protected off-site connections and is dramatically faster than the AIM modules available with 2800 series routers. The top-of-the-line Cisco 2951 Series Integrated Services G2 router supports 600 SIP sessions. Wired and wireless connectivity options include T1/E1, T3/E3, xDSL, plus copper and fiber GbE.
Cisco 2900 ISR G2 routers accommodate the Cisco Enhanced EtherSwitch Service Modules, providing high-throughput features that match Cisco’s Catalyst 2960 and Catalyst 3650-E Series Switches. Compared to the older 2821 Integrated Services router which the Cisco 2921 ISR G2 router is intended to replace, the 2921 is shipped by default with 256 megabytes vs. 64 megabytes of CompactFlash storage and can be loaded with up to 4 gigabytes instead of 256 megabytes. Standard dynamic RAM capacity is 512 MB vs. 256 MB and maximum DRAM size is 2.5 GB compared to 1 gigabytes.
3900 Series Integrated Services G2 Routers
Cisco offers four models for the high-end 3900 Series Integrated Services G2 router, the 3925, 3945, 3925E, and 3945E. These devices offer the highest performance and slot densities in Cisco’s ISR Generation 2 family and support high-speed DSPs for the most demanding voice/video environments, accelerated on-board encryption, a wide selection of connectivity alternatives, up to 98 modular Ethernet LAN switches, and as many as 2,500 SIP sessions. To protect your investment, the Cisco 3900 Integrated Services G2 routers support Cisco’s Services Performance Engine, a modular motherboard that can be replaced easily to enhance processing power without requiring your business to purchase a new piece of equipment. As with other ISR G2 routers, Cisco’s 3900 Series also protects previous network investments by supporting the majority of the modules from first-generation Cisco Integrated Services Routers. For advanced uptime, 3900 Series ISR G2 offer two power supplies.
In comparison to the older 3825 Integrated Services router that the 2921 ISR G2 router is intended to replace, the Cisco 3925 router is shipped by default with 256 megabytes as opposed to 64 MB of CompactFlash memory and can be loaded with up to 4 gigabytes instead of 256 megabytes. Standard dynamic RAM capacity is 1 gigabyte vs. 256 megabytes and maximum DRAM size is 4 gigabytes compared to 1 GB.
Cisco 4000 Series ISR Routers
Cisco's 4000 Line of ISR Routers are compact modular and scalable platforms intended for businesses with multiple branches and offsite users who need direct access to private data centers as well as public clouds via VPNs and the Internet. Cisco's 4000 series provides the bandwidth required for hybrid WAN environments to support mobile users, cloud services, and HD video applications by using wide area network optimization, deep packet inspection, and traffic-management techniques. Models in the ISR 4000 product line run Cisco's powerful IOS XE operating system, come in a 1RU or 2RU form factor, can handle as much as 2 Gbps of throughput, and can have up to 3 interface module slots, 2 service module slots, 4 integrated Gigabit Ethernet ports, and 8 CPU core integrated server modules. ISR 4000 models can support integrated Gigabit Ethernet, T1/E1, T3/E3, PRI and xDSL. To manage unified communications, the 400o ISR offers comprehensive edge support for policy-enhanced session border control, telephony fault tolerance, and TDM gateways.
The major difference between the Cisco 4400 and 4300 Series Routers is redundant power supply capability in the 4400 Series, providing a greater degree of availability. The 4321 Integrated Services Router comes in a 1 RU desktop form factor with two network interface modules (NIMs), offers up to 100 Mbps throughput, and can handle 240 Digital Voice and Video Channels. Cisco's 4331 router has a 1 RU package and includes two network interface modules, delivers as much as 300 Mbps performance, and supports 360 Digital Voice and Video Channels. Cisco's 4351 router comes in a 2 RU package and includes three network interface modules, delivers as much as 400 Mbps performance, and supports 720 Digital Voice and Video Channels. The dual power supply 4431 ISR Router features a 2 RU form factor and includes three NIMs, offers up to 1 Gbps throughput, and can handle 720 Digital Voice/Video Channels. Cisco's redundant-power 4431 router comes in a 2 RU package and includes three NIMs, delivers as much as 2 Gbps throughput, and can handle 1200 Digital Voice/Video Channels.
Cisco's First Generation ISR Routers
Cisco's original ISR routers, with more than 6M devices in operation, are the industry's most popular technology for small to medium-sized businesses and enterprise satellite offices to achieve high-performance, secure, and reliable connectivity to vital applications. Progent's CCIE-certified network engineers are proven experts at delivering remote consulting, management, and troubleshooting services for Cisco 1800, 2800, and 3800 family Integrated Services Routers. Progent can help your company to upgrade to the current release of Cisco IOS control software with minimal service interruption to your IT operations, assess the security profile of your router setup, and help you to move economically to the latest releases of Cisco ISR G2 routers whenever it makes sense for your business.
Cisco 1800 Integrated Services Routers
The Cisco 1800 family of integrated services routers combine data and protection within one resilient system for high-speed, scalable access to mission-critical business applications. The Cisco 1800 Series architecture has been especially developed to meet the requirements of small-to-medium-sized businesses, branch offices, and ISP-managed services applications for delivery of simultaneous services at high performance. The integrated systems design of the Cisco 1800 Series routers offers maximum flexibility and investment protection.
Cisco's 1841 router provides substantial advantages in comparison to previous generations of Cisco 1700 Series devices by bringing more than a fivefold speed improvement plus integrated hardware-based encryption enabled by an optional Cisco IOS Software security image. The 1841 integrated services router dramatically improves plug-in card slot performance as well as capacity over Cisco's 1700 Series routers while still maintaining support for dozens of available WAN interface cards (WICs) and multiflex trunk cards (VWICs-for data only). The 1841 device provides further enhancement of Virtual Private Network performance with an optional Virtual Private Network acceleration module; IPS and firewall functions; support for a wide range of connectivity requirements, such as support for optional integrated switch ports; and sufficient speed and expansion slot capacity for future network growth and next-generation applications.
2800 Series Integrated Services Routers
Designed for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprise branch offices, Cisco's 2800 Series routers consists of several basic versions: the 2801 router, the 2811 router, the 2821, and the 2851 router. Cisco's 2800 routers provide significant added value in comparison to prior models of Cisco routers at comparable price points by delivering as much as a five times performance improvement, as much as a 10x improvement in security and voice speed, built-in service features, and dramatically increased slot performance and capacity while preserving support for the vast majority of the over 90 existing modules available currently for the 1700, Cisco's 2600 Series, and the Cisco 3700 Series devices.
The Cisco 2800 offers an array of popular protection features such as an IOS Software Firewall, an IPS, IPsec Virtual Private Network, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Virtual Private Network, advanced application inspection and management, Secure Shell Protocol Version 2.0, and SNMPv3 in a single secure solution. Additionally, by incorporating security features within the router, Cisco can provide unique intelligent protection functions other security appliances can't, such as network admissions control (NAC) for virus defense; V3PN for quality-of-service enforcement when combining voice, video, and VPN; DMVPN; Group Encrypted Transport (GET); and Easy Virtual Private Networks for enabling more scalable and manageable VPN networks.
Organizations can utilize the Cisco 2800 Series to deploy a converged IP telephony environment for as many as 96 IP phones, and can safely deploy data, voice, and IP telephony on a single platform for their small-to-medium sized satellite offices.
The Cisco 2800 Series incorporates an integrated access point for 802.11x wireless LAN access, Wi-Fi Hotspot services for public wireless networks, and infrastructure services for portable WLAN telephony and for larger locations.
Cisco 3800 Integrated Services Routers
Cisco 3800 Series routers are engineered for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and corporate satellite offices to offer companies the highest degree of network versatility, performance, and intelligence. Cisco 3800 Series routers smoothly incorporate advanced network engineering, smart services, and secure corporate communications into a single resilient system. The Cisco 3800 Series routers ease deployment and management, lower network cost and complexity, and provide investment protection. 3800 integrated services routers offer embedded security intelligence, excellent throughput and large memory capacity, and high-density interfaces that deliver the performance, availability, and dependability required for scaling business-critical protection, IP telephony, high-volume video, system monitoring, and web-based applications in the most demanding enterprise networks. Built for performance, the 3800 integrated services routers provide multiple simultaneous services up to wire-speed T3/E3 rates.
The proprietary routing architecture of the 3800 router is built to combine protection and voice handling with the latest wireline and wireless services for rapid installation of new applications, including application layer functions, smart network services, and converged communications. The Cisco 3800 Series integrated services router supports the bandwidth requirements for several Fast Ethernet interfaces for each expansion slot, TDM connections, and fully integrated power distribution to modules supporting 802.3af PoE, while also accommodating the existing portfolio of interfaces. This ensures ongoing ROI by supporting network scaling or accommodating changes in technology as new applications are deployed. By combining the capabilities of several distinct devices into one small unit, the Cisco 3800 router significantly reduces the cost and hassle of administering wide area networks.
Cisco's Midrange WAN Aggregation Routers and Carrier-class Routers
Cisco’s midrange WAN aggregation and carrier routers can provide larger businesses with high-performance, secure headends to aggregate branch office and remote user traffic and to offer carriers economical wide area network edge solutions. Cisco’s midrange and carrier router portfolio includes the Cisco 7600 Series Routers, the ASR 1000 ASR product line, the ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers, and the Cisco Carrier Routing System.
Progent's national team of Cisco CCIE certified network experts have extensive backgrounds working with enterprises and service providers to plan optimal installations and smooth upgrades of Cisco's midrange and carrier-class routers. Progent's GIAC-certified information assurance experts can provide unbiased, third-party network security inventory evaluations, penetration services and advanced SIEM solutions to help enterprises that use Cisco's WAN aggregation routers to comply with business guidelines and statutory mandates for network data protection and incident reporting.
7600 Integrated Services Routers
The Cisco 7600 Series router benefits from the Cisco Catalyst 6500 infrastructure with an NEBS-3 chassis, 256-Gbps crossbar switch fabric, and 30-Mpps switching performance. High availability is provided through redundancy plus Cisco IOS Software capabilities. Also, the 7600 Series router offers a broad set of high-touch IP network services at optical speed via a variety of Optical Services Modules powered by Cisco patented Parallel Express Forwarding technology.
The Cisco 7609 router provides the choice to use a 256-Gbps SFM or the standard 32-Gbps data bus, delivering performance of 30 or 15 Mpps respectively. If the SFM is deployed, the Cisco 7609 Series can in addition support distributed switching with performance up to 168 Mpps by using the Catalyst 6500 16-port Gbit Ethernet card, which is powered by the Distributed Forwarding Card and the Switch Fabric Module.
The Cisco 7603 Series router offers only the standard 32-Gbps bus version and provides 15 million packets per second performance. The 7603 Series does not support distributed switching.
Cisco ASR 1000 Series WAN Edge Routers
Cisco’s ASR 1000 WAN Edge family of routers is designed to fill the middle of Cisco’s midrange products that concentrate on aggregating services at the WAN edge. ASR 1000 Series routers provide a small footprint, single-product solution for large businesses requiring satellite office service aggregation at supergigabit Ethernet speeds. Cisco’s ASR 1000 WAN Edge routers incorporate an innovative design that mixes on-board acceleration with software flexibility in order to offer a rich set of concurrent services without sacrificing consistent performance.
Cisco’s ASR 1000 Series WAN Edge routers include Cisco’s new QuantumFlow Processor composed of 40 custom Packet Processing Engines that together can support as many as 160 concurrent threads. This massive parallelism, combined with hardware acceleration for every service, enables the top-of-the-line ASR 1006 Aggregation Services router to expand up to 128K queues, 32,000 clients, 4K IP security tunnels at 10K sessions/second, and 2M Netflow records. This processing capability allows Cisco’s ASR 1000 Aggregation Services routers to support a broad range of advanced services concurrently in massive volume while avoiding performance degradation that could compromise adherence to service level agreements. Examples of these services include Cisco Firewall, intrusion-detection services, Network Address Translation, FPM, and in-line deep packet inspection. The ASR 1000 also allows tiered traffic control for performing multiple levels of Quality of Service to a data packet in a single pass, enhancing the user experience for next-generation IP voice and video applications.
Cisco ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers
Cisco's ASR 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers are intended as edge routers for service providers who need to support world-class data, voice and video services to residential, commercial, and mobile customers by offering non-stop operation, high performance, and application awareness. All platforms in the ASR 9000 family of Routers run Cisco's IOS XR operating system, a distributed operating system designed for continuous availability. Performance of the Cisco ASR 9000 family of Routers can scale to as high as 96 Tbps per system. the ASR 9000 portfolio of Routers support Gigabit Ethernet, 10 GE, and 100 GE and have fully redundant fabric and power supply, power entry modules, and fan trays plus backup 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 performance. The Cisco ASR 9001 has two modular bays which can support port adapters for 1 GE, 10 GE, and 40 GE. The base chassis includes four 10 GE SFP+ ports and ports for Stratum 1 clocking, building integrated timing supply, and management. The ASR 9904 Router has a 6 RU chassis and provides line-rate 10 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet connections in space-constrained sites. The 4-slot ASR 9094 can scale up to 4 Tbps of capacity in one chassis. The ASR 9912 platform comes in a 30 RU chassis and includes 12 slots slots able to handle up to 550 Gbps of throughput. The Cisco ASR 9912 has 2 route processors as well as 6+1 Fabric Cards to provide N+1 redundancy.
The Cisco CRS Carrier Routing System
Cisco's Carrier Routing System (CRS) product line, running Cisco's IOS XR distributed operating system, gives service providers high-level capacity and availability. The CRS portfolio was introduced in 2004, has been continuously enhanced, and now includes the industry's most popular multichassis network core router system. To protect existing capital investments in network infrastructure, new CRS models are compatible with earlier products.
Current product lines in the Carrier Routing System family are the CRS-1, CRS-3, and CRS-X Series Routers. Each Carrier Routing System series features single-chassis 4, 8, and 16 slot units as well as multiple-chassis models. Cisco's CRS-1 product line is based on Cisco's Silicon Packet Processor and delivers up to 92 Tbps of performance. Products in Cisco's CRS-3 Series use Cisco's QuantumFlow Array technology and can provide up to 322 Tbps. Cisco's CRS-X Series Routers use Cisco's CMOS photonics CPAK technology and scale to sustain up to 922 Tbps performance.
Cisco's Carrier Routing System Multichassis models can scale to support up to 72 line-card shelves that have the capability to deliver 400-Gbps of continuous operations for each slot. CRS Multichassis models can support up to 8 fabric shelves. MSCs and PLIMs can be used throughout the entire Cisco CRS product line.
Older Routers Maintained by Progent's Experts
Progent's CCIE support experts are familiar with older Cisco routers that are no longer available from Cisco. Progent can show you how to manage these routers and can in addition help you to rationalize and carry out migrations to current versions. Older Cisco routers maintained by Progent include:
Cisco's discontinued 870 Series access routers are targeted for small offices with up to 20 users or for teleworker sites where advanced VoIP and video and reliable connectivity using backup WAN links are required. Cisco 870 Series routers deliver excellent performance in small offices as well as enhanced security via features that include Firewall, IP Security VPN, Triple Data Encryption Standard (3DES) or AES plus DMVPN and Tunnel-less Group Encrypted Transport, an intrusion prevention system (IPS), virus defense using NAC, and policing of safe access policies.
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