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Cost Effective..

no4spam
Level 1
Level 1

Dear All,

I'm just having a question regarding Regional sites to Main Office Connectivity in a way that is cost effective..

Let's say that i have 10 remote sites that must be connected to the main office? what i want know is:

1- Is there any hardware [Router] that can support the serial connections form all these remote sites..

2- What is the recommended WAN solution just to maintain the 24/7 availability?

Regards..

no4spam

5 Replies 5

thisisshanky
Level 11
Level 11

You could go for a leased line or frame-relay connection. Frame-relay is better, because, you dont need to have 10 physical serial interfaces at the main office, unlike the leased lines. A 3600 at the main office is sufficient. (3640 or 3660).

To have 24/7 availability, You could use an alternate connection such as ISDN as backup from the remote sites.

Sankar Nair
UC Solutions Architect
Pacific Northwest | CDW
CCIE Collaboration #17135 Emeritus

Thanks thisisshanky,

After your post i've been browsing for awhile,

So kindly could you please clarify the following: For the Frame-Relay i'm going to configure on the physical interface subinterfaces correct, but up till how many subinterface can i configure?!!

what if i used 2600 series router for the main office?

is 1700 series suitable for the remote sites..?

How will it be if the clients behined the remote site want to get to the internet..?

Thanks..

Here is a link, which tells you, how many subints can be configured on each platform.

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/63/idb_limit.html

2600, doesnt give enough room for expansion. A 3600 at the central office would be the best option. You can get away with a 1700 at the remotes. Also you should consider the bandwidths that you need at the remote office as well as branch office. You can subscribe to a 64k CIR at the remotes, while you can subscribe to T1 bandwidth CIRs, at the main office. You should also configure Traffic shaping, so that the central office is not oversubscribed at anytime, by the remotes.

The remote sites can access the internet, through the central office over the frame-relay cloud.

Another cheap, option I would suggest, is to use VPN. The central office can have a PIX or a VPN concentrator, and all remotes can use a PIX 501 firewall. They can have their own internet access and be configured for Split tunneling, so that all information destined for central office, goes encrypted (3DES) over the VPN, while Internet traffic goes out unencrypted.

Sankar Nair
UC Solutions Architect
Pacific Northwest | CDW
CCIE Collaboration #17135 Emeritus

Thanks again thisisshanky,

i followed the link and oh it's huge no# of subinterfaces that can be supported..

Mainly the traffic that will be passing the links between the remote sites and the main site is DB queres.

Correct me if i'm wrong Frame-Relay can be terminated on G703 interface installed in the Routers?!! what are the other options and the additional devices?!!

Regards

no4spam

Whether you terminate it on E1 or T1, depends on which country you are. In US, its T1, while in Europe its E1. Most of the countries follow the E1 standard. Definitely frame-relay can be terminated on E1 interface.

Sankar Nair
UC Solutions Architect
Pacific Northwest | CDW
CCIE Collaboration #17135 Emeritus
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