Cisco Routers - Battle and time tested equipment
June 06, 2019

Cisco Routers - Battle and time tested equipment

Jordan Villarreal | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Routers

  • Cisco ISR 1000 Series
  • Cisco ISR 4000 Series
  • Meraki MX
We currently utilize Cisco routers as our primary routing platform across all of our locations. We depend highly on connectivity between our sites and the Cisco platforms we utilize help us achieve maximum performance and reachability.
  • Hardware reliability.
  • Software functionality.
  • Well understood by others in the industry.
  • Licensing.
  • Debugging clarity.
  • High uptime leads to business operations being reliable.
  • Good support from TAC yields in fast recovery when needed.
Generally speaking the interoperability of a Cisco router to a different platform is very straight forward. The only place you'll need to tread lightly is if you're attempting to bring in a non-Cisco router/device and your network is dependent on Cisco proprietary technologies. Other vendors have attempted to implement compatible protocols that will interoperate with Cisco proprietary technologies but I'm wary of their effectiveness.
We are utilizing a different platform for threat protections and are unable to comment on the effectiveness of Cisco in this arena.
Generally speaking, if you're connected and up, from a router standpoint, you'll be able to keep access to applications up. Cisco has begun to differentiate themselves here with the inclusion of Viptela, and to a certain extent Meraki, to bring new methods of keeping continuous access available. Since these technologies are becoming built-in this gives them an advantage over other routers that require 3rd party support to achieve it.
Generally speaking, Cisco routers can be very evenly matched with Juniper routers. Key differentiation for me is industry understanding, first party support, future-friendly development, and overall dependency. I know when it comes to hiring new engineers I'm also more likely to find a larger pool of candidates who are already familiar with the Cisco platform than any other platform that is currently on the market.
The variety of the Cisco Router platform yields itself to being utilized in nearly any situation for nearly any sector. Most use cases that a traditional Cisco router would not be a good fit are smaller businesses without dedicated network engineering staff, SOHO environments, and other places where the primary users interfacing with the equipment may not fully understand how to interface and program it.