router to router configuration

[sugaranderson1]

hello!

a newbie here. hope you can help me.

our office has cisco 2600 series router. i want to know on how i can configure it to connect to another router in a different site.

for example, from minnesota to connect in new jersey.

thank you in advance!

regards,

Sugar

[John Blakley]

What types of circuits do you have? Point-to-point or Internet only?

[sugaranderson1]

hello,

our connection is internet only. please advise on how would i configure the router to connect to another router in another site.

thanks in advance!

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[Richard Burts]

Sugar

We do not know enough about your environment yet to give you really good advice. We can identify some possibilities but until we understand better how these sites are set up we can not know which ones would work better than others.

Perhaps the most common way to achieve connection between two sites using Internet connectivity would be to set up a site to site VPN. We do not know whether your current routers support creating VPN. And we do  not know about IP addressing at the sites. If at least one site has a fixed/static IP address then VPN is straightforward. But if both sites are using dynamic assigned address from the provider then VPN is a challenge.

Another possibility might be that one or both sites have some of their devices with a static IP address translation. A static NAT helps make some devices inside the network reachable from Internet sources. This could potentially provide site to site connectivity. But we do not know about the address translations at the sites.

HTH

Rick

[sugaranderson1]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for your response.

Our main office and the remote office are both using static IP address provided by the ISP.  Our main goal in connecting these 2 networks is to share internal network resources like files. Hardware devices will not be an issue, since our the management is willing to buy a new one if necessary.

this is what i am thinking of in setting up a site to site VPN. if we wanted to share file/resources on our 2 offices, can this also be achieved in static routing? kindly advise.

thanks again and looking forward to your advise.

Sugar

[Richard Burts]

Sugar

Thank you for the additional information. If both offices are using static IP supplied by their ISP then setting up a site to site VPN should be relatively straightforward, assuming that the router supports it. Since we do not know particulars about your existing routers, and since the 2600 router is pretty old, I would suggest that you ask management to purchase new routers. I would suggest that something like the 1921 might be a good choice. It comes standard with 2 Ethernet interfaces which should take care of a connection to the Internet and a connection to inside. It also has capacity for 2 network cards if you need additional interface capacity. You would want to be sure that it was purchased with the license that supports VPN functions.

You can certainly do site to site VPN with static routing and if desired it can also be set up in a way that supports a dynamic routing protocol between your sites. It could give each site full access to resources at the other site, or that access could be restricted if you would want that.

HTH

Rick

[Leo Laohoo]

our connection is internet only.

I'll agree with Rick here.  You need to furnish us with more information than this.  Can you also elaborate on the WAN speed of your internet?  Do you have plans to increase the WAN speed in a later date?   What kind of traffic do you expect from your remote office?  How many people in the remote office?  And most important, what is your budget like to, say, purchase the correct equipment?

[sugaranderson1]

Hello,

thanks for your reply.

as far as i know our WAN speed average to 65-mbps. and yes, we have plans to upgrade to faster speed if permits.

In the remote office, we have 75 employees working in there. Budget is not actually an issue, since the management is

willing to purchase another equipment if this will help us to meet our requirements in sharing internal resources on both offices.

What setup can advise on this?

Thanks in advance.

Sugar

[Leo Laohoo]

65 Mbps?  The planned 2600 will be insufficient to push that high amount of traffic.

You will need to be looking at a 2951 (at least) to substantially push up to 75 Mbps of traffic.