Cisco router - foundation for your WAN!
February 05, 2019
Cisco router - foundation for your WAN!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Routers
- Cisco ISR 800 Series
- Cisco ISR 4000 Series
- Cisco ASR 1000 Series
Our Cisco routers build the WAN connections and manage the reachability of our branch sites to the DataCenter. They maintain some routing functionalities (with BGP in public and private usage) as well as some Unified Communication services (gateways for Cisco UC for landlines in different locations). Almost every user in our branch site uses them even if he doesn't know about this.
- Routing protocols
- First Hop Redundancy
- Advanced UC Features
- Stability with some versions of software
- Memory consumption on ISR4000 platform
- Easier upgrade procedure (without the urge to reboot)
- Fast installation with skilled engineers
- Almost no outages with correct design and proper configuration
- Rather low TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
It is very important. Cisco devices talk with each other without any problems. Sometimes interoperability with other vendors are problematic, but inside the Cisco family everything works like a charm. Sometimes older devices don't have the required features or processing power to operate with, which is rare but I saw this situation years ago.
We are not using security features on the routers beside the basic ones. We are concerned, that the security should be done on perimeter not inside the transmission network. In particular cases (especially on small devices) we sometimes use security features like VPN connection but mainly we are not using them.
I have no experience with other vendors of routers beside the home ones. We are using Cisco and are not planning to change it in the next few years. Ages ago I have used some 3com equipment, but there is no comparison with Cisco - they were very old and were fastly replaced by Cisco.
Some old equipment - 1600, 1700, 1800, 2600, 2800, 3600, 4400, 7200 and some other old devices which were replaced by new ones or their functionalities are moved to the other devices (eg L3 switches). Sometimes we use dedicated rugged routers in specific environments but this is outside of my scope.