Network equipment for small office

jmarsh · ‎07-09-2008

Hello,

I am looking for suggestions for what to buy for connecting a small office to another small office via site to site vpn. I currently have an 871w in the larger office(25 users). Here is what I need to do.

1. Site to site vpn with new remote office(10 Users)

2. VPN for remote users, probably max of 4-5 at the same time

I also have a question about the firewall. I have the firewall set up on the 871w but should I purchase a seperate piece for firewall/VPN Management? ASA5505 or something along those lines? Is the firewall for 871w considered secure?

Thanks

stephen.stack · ‎07-10-2008

Hi,

I'm gonna answer your questions backwards, if you don't mind.

Firstly (or lastly) The Cisco 871 is a very secure Firewall/Device incorporating IPS and application layer filtering, for those nasty bugs. Some people really prefer a dedicated firewall device like the ASA for deep packet inspection etc... I personally like to keep things simple.

The Cisco 871 is an excellent site to site VPN device. Very easy to setup and monitor using Ciscos SDM software. However - be warned - Cisco IOS does not work well with some types of site to site VPNs and Remote Access VPNs (Cisco VPN Client -EasyVPN).

I have attempted such before to miserable failure. Only to forward PPTP traffic to a Microsoft RRAS server. (Any 2k/2k3 MS Server will do).

I am open to contradiction on this but using the EasyVPN in conjunction with a Site to Site VPN does not work well.

HTH - Please rate if it does.

Regards

Stephen

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kplunkett512 · ‎07-14-2008

Your 871 should be fine. You can go with an 851 at the remote site. We use 851's and 871's at all of our SOHO offices and have it going into a 2811 - works great for us. I have multiple RA VPN profiles and multiple site to site tunnels and they work great.

jmarsh · ‎07-16-2008

Thanks for all of the help.

srue · ‎07-16-2008

an asa5505 works well for terminating remote vpn users and site 2 site vpn's.

i agree, terminating both on IOS is a chore.

you can get the asa5505 fairly cheap at www.lanstreet.com