We use this solution for interconnecting our branch offices. We have six branches in addition to our head office.
All of our routers are on-premises deployments.
We use this solution for interconnecting our branch offices. We have six branches in addition to our head office.
All of our routers are on-premises deployments.
The Cisco routers are very stable.
We can use these routers for multiple links, so in terms of scalability, it's a plus for us.
Cisco has one of the best products in terms of routing because of the protocols in which they provide.
In terms of room for improvement, I think that there is a need for additional administration. We have seen other products, such as the Cisco Email Security Appliance and the Cisco Web Security Appliance, now have a web-based interface. We would like to see this in the routers, as well. It would make our administration easier.
Considering the increase in data that is being processed across networks, I think that increasing the CPU size to boost processing power would be wise. People are now trying to do more analytics, so this would be helpful.
I think that it would be better for analytics if the local storage, on the router itself, were increased. This would allow us to store more data for analysis as we are trying to secure our network.
This is a very stable solution.
The scalability of this solution is good.
These routers support a user base of about seven hundred and fifty people. We do not immediately plan on increasing our usage, although as the economy grows, we can see increasing our user base to perhaps one thousand users in two years. It will increase as we open more branch offices.
We have reached out to Cisco's technical support, and in the past six years, the service and support have been excellent. We are happy with the turnaround times.
Cisco is very a popular vendor in this country, so I have been using Cisco products all along, in terms of routing. I have not been exposed to other technologies.
The basic setup is pretty straightforward, although we have reached out to Cisco for help when we needed to implement tight security and integration with other Cisco products.
We have a technical team of about ten people who manage these routers. There are six system administrations and three people in the head office.
We used our Cisco Premier Partner, who are local, to assists us with these solutions.
Cisco is mid-tier in terms of pricing and quite affordable by most enterprises.
There are some people trying to introduce other technology such as Check Point and Juniper, but our Enterprise customers rely on Cisco.
Mostly, this is a very good product.
I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
The statistics show you a full brief of every user, every type of connection used, and the total bandwidth used. We control our VPNs through it and our actual line of defense for our security is the Cisco firewall. We have four different fiber connections and two satellite connections connected to our offices. They all load balance through Cisco and another analytics device. It integrates very well into our network and we find it to be extremely robust and durable.
It has provided us a more secure environment, especially the firewall. We've had multiple attempts of network intrusion which have been defeated because of the firewall rules in place.
Their support has room for improvement. The regional agents are not that great.
The devices can be a bit of an energy hog. We would like to see a more durable power supply system because being in a third world country we have frequent power outages and it takes a bit of time for our generators and stuff to kick in which then leads to power surges and whatnot. Even with the proper power management system, it can also affect the devices themselves.
We're extremely satisfied with the stability. We've had around two or three outages in the last 18 years.
We are very limited in terms of scalability. We're a small firm, we hardly have 30 people.
Our entire company uses it. We're all on the network. We have 152 users right now and we support about another 135 mobile devices. They're all financial institutions.
Cisco support itself is excellent. Some of the resellers are very good but some aren't.
The initial setup was quite easy. Our employees are Cisco certified so they are familiar with the setup and activities of the products. The very initial setup was in 2001. After that, we just swapped it for the updated rules of the devices. That's all we had to do. It's been a seamless integration and a seamless upgrade with very minimal downtime.
Our implementation strategy was that we had to open an office in 30 days. It took us about two weeks to wire the entire office up and put the hardware in place. It was a total initial build so we had no issues at all. Everything was covered. We did have serious problems where we had the wiring issues and whatnot, but otherwise, it was business as usual.
We have three people in our network department who oversee the devices, maintenance and whatever needs to be done. We have two technicians and one Cisco certified tech.
Our initial setup was done by a Cisco reseller. We had a good experience with them and we had normal issues. We had issues with one of our appliances that had gone down and we couldn't get a replacement but that was an issue on their part.
Our issues are basically currency related. The licensing is in dollars and the dollar is steadily rising. We've had an increase in the licensing fee due to the simple reason that the exchange rate is almost over 40%. That creates a major issue. If the currency devaluation doesn't stabilize, we may have to look at another solution.
I would advise someone outside the US to consider the issues that we're facing right now, the currency devaluation and licensing fees.
I would rate it a nine out of ten because we haven't had any major issues with it.
This solution helps us with our inter-network constitution, and that works for us.
The most valuable feature is the configuration that is involved with iOS. In addition, it is very durable. It does not have downtime.
It comes with 3-1 default box and other parts. You have to buy additional lamp parts, which adds to the cost if they could, but affect the number of parts with the default configuring.
The solution is quite impressive.
The scalability is good. It is durable, and quite good.
I have not used tech support.
The initial setup was very good.
The pricing is a huge issue. I had to convince my company to purchase this solution. It is very expensive, and prohibitive.
I think the network backup for this solution is solid, and is worthwhile for any company to consider.
Installed at many locations using a hub-and-spoke design to connect remote sites to central locations over GRE tunnels.
I extensively used site-to-site VPNs, access control, etc., linking remote sites to the central location to create a highly distributed organization.
Recently, there seems to be a lot of people who are leaning towards Juniper CLI, which is easier to pick up.
This is the Enterprise Class solution for Routing, all technologies needs for now and for the future are supported. Everything is well documented in Cisco DOC site, with a lot of deployment scenarios as well in others sites around the web. Technically it is incontestable.
Solved most communications needs and trouble scenarios.
I cannot see any, maybe more new technologies that we unknown.
For eight years and counting.
A lot, but the majority is due to vendor incompatibility with others and errors in deployment.
None.
It dependent of the scenario and technical use and needs.
Very good.
Technical Support:Very Good.
Yes, it depends of the customer's budget and management directions.
Very easy in all the ways.
In-house one.
It is can be very expensive and licensing complex.
Yes, Juniper and Brocade solutions.
It's got fantastic throughput which meets most of the network Gbps/Tbps data throughput in Next-Generation Networks (NGN) that are in use in today's industry.
Cost is very expensive, it needs to be reviewed for affordability by SMEs. They are on the high side for some SMEs who are willing to deploy high standard IT solution powered by Cisco but most of the time, they are not able to afford Cisco SME products.
SIP and MGCP - the router is a voice gateway router which terminates all calls to and from the PSTN.
Automatic calls routing depending on certain conditions such as dialled digits and received calls. We can automatically select which telecom provider to use for certain calls.
Nothing that I can think of. If you want to improve, you have the choice to upgrade the hardware.
I've used it for four years.
No issues encountered.
It's been very stable since deployment.
No scalability issues.
Excellent customer service.
Technical Support:I never had an issue yet with this product which required TAC intervention but from my previous experience Cisco TAC support is the best.
We were using the old Telco PABX and had to switch over to VoIP because it was irrelevant and incompatible.
It's easy to deploy if you know what you are doing, and have a proper migration plan.
It was an in-house deployment.
It's high.
It's worth the price you pay.
It's best for branch office deployment.
The wireless router is probably the most important part of our daily life for network configuration.
It is the main door to connect to the Internet, and then share the network or WI-Fi signal for all connected devices. Director for, as well as file sharing, voice over IP, remote access and other services, according to the VPN.
The router is functioning normally 24-7. There are thousands of data packets to pass through every day, and is expected to run smoothly. Paradoxically, it is also a unit of less interest to most people. In fact, it has been observed that when not working properly, Router which is not only fast but feature rich is also very important to have a reliable option.
In my opinion, Cisco’s enterprise products contains important features like WAN ports, LAN ports, Integrated Service Router (ISR) capability which perform multimedia streamlines, transforms service delivery for cloud and cell phone device connectivity. Another feature of the Cisco enterprise Router is that all the ISR routers have Cisco proprietary protocol IGRP , EIGRP (the popular Cisco’s protocols) and Cisco discovery protocol . Wireless enterprise Router provides security in four forms like WPA2, WPA2-Enterprise, WPA-Enterprise, WPA which ensures better security through 128 bit encryption (up to 256 bit encryption is possible). From an administration point of view, I feel that it's easy for the Admin. To configure a router through its CLI interface. Now a day all he latest version of Cisco handles IPV6 integration and usage.
Counterparts of Cisco are the juniper and Huawei which have no any specialized proprietary protocols which still cause them to lay down in front of Cisco’s routers. Huawei introduces many router rich in feature in low price but still it is unable to achieve that level of quality. The router is simple to install, setup and maintain , friendly and top notch GUI to configure through both web base or CLI base platforms.
Disadvantage
I didn’t find any disadvantage except the energy utilization and power consumption which has been compensated in new handy versions of Routers . Also the Cisco proprietary protocols (EIGRP, IGRP and CDP) can best be utilized with the Cisco’s router only.

Hi Dylan
Thanks for reaching out. As from your comment, it seems that you are asking and offering me at the same time:) right? So I have no new projects right now. And what I am getting from Cisco's router is the thing I observed during my usage of Cisco's router and if any other things come up, I will let you know.