Cisco ISR 4K- Flexible, Feature-rich
June 25, 2018
Cisco ISR 4K- Flexible, Feature-rich
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Routers
- Cisco ISR 4000 Series
We use ISR4K exclusively for corporate and branch offices operating at 1Gbps or less on the wide area network. They are extremely effective WAN routers coming in very useful [for] typical form factors depending on HA and the number of interface requirements. Typical use case is for ethernet circuits less than 1Gbps or TDM such as T1. Secondary use case is voice: E&M, FXO, CME. The high-density analog module gives us a great option for larger analog footprint locations. Tertiary use case is iWAN and foreseeably SD-WAN.
- Easy to use, simple to operate, highly predictable. IOS/IOS-XE is well known and there is a virtually limitless pool of engineers who know this platform and if not having direct experience, can apply knowledge from other IOS/IOS-XE with very little adjustment.
- Extremely flexible due to wide variety of interfaces. NIM and SM-X provide a great deal options: TDM, E&M, FXO, FXS, switches and servers are all options.
- Robust IP feature set: Routing protocols, NBAR, Netflow, QoS, DMVPN. This large IP feature set gives us the ISR makes it a highly re-usable router, capable in many different use cases.
- I would like to see an extremely simpler licensing. ISR still suffers from Cisco licensing complexity.
- I would like to see improvements in IOS-XE incorporating some of the capabilities found in IOS-XR e.g., config commits and rollback. This may require an IOS fork but unifying IOS-XR and IOS-XE would be a welcome change.
- I would like to see unified SD-WAN, Voice, and IOS-XE image. I believe this is already on the roadmap.
- Cisco Routers provide us the features we need for central SIP trunking which is a huge cost saving vs. POTS and KSU.
- Reduction in WAN circuit costs are expected with SD-WAN.
To some degree yes. For us, having EIGRP support was important for some branch offices as EIGRP is our IGP standard. For locations where EIGRP is not being used, consistency of operations and familiarity with IOS/IOS-XE were some of the drivers. Finally, certain technologies where well-established with CVDs and design blueprints e.g., DMVPN. The wealth of knowledge and documentation surrounding complex designs definitely helped make this decision easier.
We do not use Cisco Routers for security for providing SEIM with netflow.
It depends on the specific HA requirements of the site. Some sites, we want that little bit more HA but don't need the capacity or a large number of NIMs. For that use case, we might use the 4431 with redundant power supplies. Some sites, we don't have redundant power and no HA is required, e.g., retail. Those we might use 4331. We have not found any real MTBF issues with Cisco routers, excluding the well publicized ISR4K clock signal component issue which required us to replace all our 4Ks. However, our account team was proactive about it and we were early in our deployment cycle so it wasn't a painful issue.