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Help choosing the appropriate router.

it
Level 1
Level 1

Hi guys,

We are int he process of upgrading our WAN to higher speed data links back to our head office.

We have a number of remote sites, which we be getting either 4Mb/s and 6Mb/s data pipes (over the carrier MPLS network) back to head office.

At the moment each site has 2600 routers in place. We need a solution which will not only be able to route at those speeds, but also provide QoS. I know the 2800 series has QoS and i am pretty certain it can route traffic at those speeds. But i am not 100% certain.

Can anyone tell me what the cheapest model of router possible for this solution would be? I am pretty rusty on hardware.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

1 Accepted Solution

Accepted Solutions

Well, the 28xx aren't cheap. You might find a sweet spot with an 8 port 3560 that delivers lot of bang for the buck.

In telecom industry we still talk megabits, cisco is no exception.

View solution in original post

10 Replies 10

paolo bevilacqua
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Which interface to SP do you have? Eg, if ethernet, even a 1801/1841 (no voice) or a 1861 (full CME / voice capabilities) could do.

Oh sorry. Yeah x2 Ethernet ports are required.

So 1801's can route at that speed? For some reason i was thinking they could only go as fast as T1... but really i have no idea.

Sure they can. Actually for a cheap design even 871s would do. See attached.

Thanks for that. That chart is very helpful.

One question though. The performance on the chart is measured in Mega Bits per second, yeah? The 1801 router doess switching at 35.86Mbps. The 2811 does 61.44Mbps.

Actually i may have made a mistake in my initial post. I was trying to represent Megabytes. Sorry for the confusion. The links we have will be max 6MB (megabytes) per second. So meaning 60.00Mbs. Am i thinking clearly that from the chart, the 2811 would be the choice?

You should compute 6x8 = 48, the thing is that it may be bidirectional, so you end up needing a 100 mbps router.

On the other hand since it's MPLS you might not need routers at all and connect L3 switches directly to the new service.

Yeah we can use Layer 3 switches but we are on a budget and management doesn't want to fork out for that as we already have Layer 2 switches in place.

I never took into consideration the bi-directional. Thanks for the heads up.

Still looking at the chart. I think i have confused myself now. Is this represented in Megabits per second or Megabytes per second?

Well, the 28xx aren't cheap. You might find a sweet spot with an 8 port 3560 that delivers lot of bang for the buck.

In telecom industry we still talk megabits, cisco is no exception.

Ok great, thanks for clearing that up.

I guess we have no choice... we paid for a faster service, now i guess we have to pay for the hardware to utlisise it.

So atleast a 2811 router or a 3650 switch i guess.

Sorry for the confusion with the megabits.. our provider gave me a diagram using Megabytes for speed and it threw me off guard haha.

Cheers.

The chart doesn't account for bidirectional traffic although it notes performance will be impacted by other services (such as your desire to implement QoS). Pershaps as a rough rule of thumb, you might want a router with 3 or 4x the (simplex) bandwidth.

As Paolo notes in his post, with Ethernet handoffs you might consider L3 switches, but do note they're not as feature rich.

Leo Laohoo
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Hope this link will help you in your quest.

http://www.ciscowebtools.com/ProductAdvisor/routers.asp

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