Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000) provides a scalable, flexible foundation so you can quickly integrate leading IT initiatives like SD-WAN and edge compute, while meeting the explosive network performance need driven by cloud-based application adoption.
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Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000)
Score 9.6 out of 10
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Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000) are designed to support carrier edge networks.
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Pricing
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)
Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000)
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)
Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000)
Chose Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)
In competitive realm of networks, Cisco boasts of robust financial performance and price per device, TCO and ROI are far better. Cisco provides versatility in supporting various applications including industrial networks. It is extremely reliable and a market leader. Highest …
Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers (ISR 4000)
Cisco 9000 Series Aggregation Services Routers (ASR 9000)
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
Actually if we place it into the internet gateway, we do nothing in front of the firewall. Yes, it's working well also, if we put into the routing, it works well. But we should not use it instead of switch. Because some people tend to use the router instead of layer three suite. So yes, I try to use it.
It is very well suited to act as your aggregator / core switch for mid to large facilities. it is flexible enough to really be useable in small environments but costs may hinder that. It has redundancy of power and management blades that does add a lot of peace of mind and security. Really the only reason you would not use a 9000 series is frankly cost and/or real requirements for performance. They have several versions of this model, plus they have an entire set of lines that can accommodate nearly as much as the 9000. Less demand or less of a budget can weigh in the decision to select this particular model.
The ISR 4000 is an excellent router for our voice services. We purchased CUBE licensing in order to do this.
The ISR 4000 is an excellent router for security purposes as well. We purchased the security license with the router and that allowed us to run a Zone-Based Firewall.
The ISR 4000 is very simple and straight forward to configure.
A greater number of onboard WAN ports would be an improvement over the model we purchased, which only had two. [This] means we'll have to buy more expensive network cards to get more convenience.
The small router was a plus in some branches, but it was a hindrance in others. Its width is about half the size of the rack, so we had to keep it on top of another device.
When compared to its competitors, the rack mounting kit is unreliable and expensive to purchase.
[The] upgrade process [is] overly complicated compared to NX-OS or IOS. New images and the current configuration need to be compiled into "golden IOS's". If you don't include the configuration, you will have a clean device with no configuration.
[There are] major bugs in every release. We have had to cycle through all of our routers 3 times in the last year for updates due to show-stopping bugs that did not come to light until after the changes were made in production.
[It has] terrible documentation. You have to mine their site to get to any documentation for recent versions of IOS-XR. If you make the leap from 32-bit cXR to 64-bit eXR, then the documentation is more or less non-existent. Due to the internal architecture of hardware itself, technical specs can change from software version to software version, so don't expect any sort of firm scalability numbers. You'll have to rely on your sales engineer for that.
Regarding usability, this router has everything you need, except for a good GUI. Of course it can be integrated with other tools, but it lacks any native GUI option. Any engineer who is comfortable using CLI will find all options they need. Routing, security, voice are just examples of all the things you can do with it.
The code for the switch is slightly different than the 2960X series that it is replacing, but still very familiar. It was relatively straightforward to work around this minor issue. The switch itself is solid and is very flexible as well as reliable.
At the time (during 2020 - COVID) there was an issue getting the new switches due to circumstances around COVID with reduced work force, etc. Generally we have not had an issue getting the product in a timely fashion.
There is always room for improvement with support, but Cisco support has been good to me over the years. Being able to call or submit online TAC cases makes it so I can get my issues or questions answered faster. They have even added the TAC bot for TAC cases to get to support even faster!
In some ways, the platform is a big improvement over our previous IOS and NX-OS devices: They offer version-controlled configuration staging/commits. They have a robust portfolio of network protocols and features even beyond datacenter devices. Due to the use of NPUs instead of relying entirely on ASICs for forwarding, new versions of the software are able to improve hardware performance and capacity. Unfortunately, I have run into more bugs on IOS-XR than I ever did on IOS or even NX-OS (which has a shocking number of bugs of its own) and you have to be a licensing guru to get your order right the first time.
If you planning on upgrading your network to software defined networks, Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers are the best. To successfully implement the project you need to plan and communicate with all your stake holders
Really, the only issue encountered when deploying the new 9000 series was attempting to copy a working config from an older series switch and applying it to the new 9000 series. Once it was explained that a new switch configuration needs to be built up specifically for the 9000 and deployed were the issues resolved.
We did not compare the Cisco 4000 Series Integrated Services Routers to other competitors as we used Cisco for a long period of time already. We selected this product as we used a lot of CISCO products in the past and with good support. Other products don't have the protocols that CISCO products have.
When we are integrating the ASR9000 router with other devices then there should be the same device that can cater to the throughput. We can use the Cisco 9600 Switch which can be easily integrated and can handle the speed in terms of uplinks 40G can be handled. Adding to this Cisco DNA Center can be integrated to do the automation and monitoring purposes.
We work directly with our vendor/partner who works closely with our ability to pay at certain times of the year due to budget restraints of public education.
Depending on the model of 9000, it can be as simple of a setup as needed, or can be as expandable as required. The units we purchased only had SFP ports for basic trunk line configuration
Can be used for ISE, Meraki access point, FTD firewall, works well, no worry about integration with any third party product. As this device can be multipurpose, ROI is faster and usable for longer period of time, as no EOL any time soon
This is an integrated modular device so even if my small offices are closed over a period of time, this can be re-purposed for other requirements within organization
This device supports WAN optimization within software. This reduces the requirement of that specific optimization device, which reduces my overall cost for a branch network
We didn't need to buy new devices when we were increasing backbone capacity from 1G to 10G.
Due to the modular nature of the software, when there is an issue with any running services, we need not reboot the whole device which affects all clients and availability.
