Cisco router for home use?

[CodedGrey]

Hi, I'm usually a spectator on these forums, but have always enjoyed the extensive replies - especially in the networking forums. Anyways, I'm on my fourth semester of cisco classes, and really enjoy just fiddling around with the routers. This showed up in my email the other day, "During the promotion, the 871 is available for US$250, and the 871W is available for US$300." Good, bad, thoughts? I've also been looking on ebay at some equipment in the 2600 series. My only main requierements are two 10/100 ports, and a general cap on price is around 400. Suggestions?

Ed

 

[MulLa]

I would probably suggest picking up a modular router from eBay. Simply because there's so much more you can do with them rather than the 800 series. 2600 series is a good choice tho I don't think they take any of the ADSL2 WICs if you ever plan to use ADSL2.

ADSL2 WIC Info

I'm looking at picking up an 1841 from work. Probably end up costing me roughly US$840 after our partner discount. Still saving up for it

 

[Atheus]

I was looking at some of those just yesterday, they seem really cool but they're expensive. I've never done a cisco course, but i've done a lot of other networking stuff, and I was thinking of teaching myself IOS and cisco. Would this be an easy jump?

So what can I do with a modular cisco apart from basic routing duties? Can they do firewalling for example, or do you need a PIX firewall for that?

And how powerful are the older models? Some of them seem to be specced quite low in terms of processor speed and such... but I suppose the CPU is not that important unless you're doing encryption... or do they offload encryption to specialized hardware? Someone educate me.

 

[MulLa]

I'm not an expert with this so someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

You can add firewalling / encryption to your routers provided you have the correct IOS version with the required feature. Just make sure you have enough RAM / FLASH in your router to take the upgraded IOS if you need to upgrade. RAM / FLASH can be acquired from eBay cheaply if necessary.

Don't pay too much attention to the CPU speed of the older models. Just look at the throughput figures and see if that's greater than your WAN link. I'm pretty sure they are all sufficiently speced for a home network setup.

Hopefully I haven't provided too much wrong info

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: Atheus
I was looking at some of those just yesterday, they seem really cool but they're expensive. I've never done a cisco course, but i've done a lot of other networking stuff, and I was thinking of teaching myself IOS and cisco. Would this be an easy jump?

So what can I do with a modular cisco apart from basic routing duties? Can they do firewalling for example, or do you need a PIX firewall for that?

And how powerful are the older models? Some of them seem to be specced quite low in terms of processor speed and such... but I suppose the CPU is not that important unless you're doing encryption... or do they offload encryption to specialized hardware? Someone educate me.

im not too sure, as im only starting my 4th semester at my highschool next week... but.... i dont think there is any firewall software... most firewall-type stuff in cisco routers (at least the 2500-series routers we play with) is all access-list type stuff... so u can block specific ports and protocols, but nothing thats dynamic, at least i don't know of anything

 

[spidey07]

you can do "real" firewall stuff with IOS provided you get the FW feature.

I don't know if you can get that on a 2500 as they are ancient (think intel 486 ancient)

But for learning basic IOS the 2500s are good and cheap. They would however have a hard time keeping up with today's broadband speeds and are more of a learning tool.

I've got about 9 of them as it stands.

 

[MulLa]

<- Trying to find out where Spidy07 lives But somehow don't think it's worth the plane ticket to go and help myself to some routers

 

[jwhitt]

honestly i wouldnt put a cisco router in my home use enviroment, something cool to play around with id recomend either a linksys wrt54g with open-wrt on it, or if your feeling like a badass pick yourself up a net4801 soekris 4801 http://www.soekris.com/how_to_buy.htm there are several options avialble, ranging from 260 ish to 650 ish depending on what you want (dsu/tsu, multiple ethernet controlers etc, then toss a copy of monowall http://m0n0.ch/wall/ on a 128 meg cf card 12 dollars on new egg (mono only needs 8 meg, however those are unavialble) and youll have a pretty pimp system the board has a pci slot on it so you can toss whatever pci card you want on there (ie: cisco 350 series wireless card) etc, by the way your in high school taking cisco courses.. i did that too (several years ago part of a tech prep program in nw ohio pretty smooth stuff

 

[destrekor]

Originally posted by: jwhitt
honestly i wouldnt put a cisco router in my home use enviroment, something cool to play around with id recomend either a linksys wrt54g with open-wrt on it, or if your feeling like a badass pick yourself up a net4801 soekris 4801 http://www.soekris.com/how_to_buy.htm there are several options avialble, ranging from 260 ish to 650 ish depending on what you want (dsu/tsu, multiple ethernet controlers etc, then toss a copy of monowall http://m0n0.ch/wall/ on a 128 meg cf card 12 dollars on new egg (mono only needs 8 meg, however those are unavialble) and youll have a pretty pimp system the board has a pci slot on it so you can toss whatever pci card you want on there (ie: cisco 350 series wireless card) etc, by the way your in high school taking cisco courses.. i did that too (several years ago part of a tech prep program in nw ohio pretty smooth stuff

nw ohio... as in near toledo? im in toledo, H.S. is whitmer

Originally posted by: spidey07
you can do "real" firewall stuff with IOS provided you get the FW feature.

I don't know if you can get that on a 2500 as they are ancient (think intel 486 ancient)

But for learning basic IOS the 2500s are good and cheap. They would however have a hard time keeping up with today's broadband speeds and are more of a learning tool.

I've got about 9 of them as it stands.

we got some 1700 series as well.. but they dont seem to be much more though.. lol
modular capability though
yea, i knew that was a shot in the dark, but i thought i'd give my 2cents

 

[CodedGrey]

Originally posted by: MulLa
I would probably suggest picking up a modular router from eBay. Simply because there's so much more you can do with them rather than the 800 series. 2600 series is a good choice tho I don't think they take any of the ADSL2 WICs if you ever plan to use ADSL2.

ADSL2 WIC Info

I'm looking at picking up an 1841 from work. Probably end up costing me roughly US$840 after our partner discount. Still saving up for it

Ya, I had been reading up on the 1800 series, seemed overkill for what I wanted - one can always dream though. I figure I'll just go with a 2620 or something, I'm in no urgent situation. Maybe I can play around with my wrt54gs.

 

[jwhitt]

i wouldnt waste the time with teh 2620's or anythig in that range look at least at the 3600's, just for modularibility of them. if your dire of cisco equipment. the cool thing about the classes your in you r instructor usually has access to dl cisco ios's id make good friends with him and get yourself a few different copies of different ios's. yeah i currently go to college at bgsu

 

[jwhitt]

yeah i just did some looking around on e-bay, for the best bang for your buck id go with those soekris boxes i showed you erlyer they are seriously badass, ive used those as wireless bridges with various setups etc etc, they are really cool little machines id say for the most bang for your buck go with them, or get yourself a junker and toss mono or some other distro ie smoothwall, etc... actually therrs another one like mono, that is beefyer, however i cant recall the name of it at the time.. sorry ill do some looking around and get back with ya... anyway off to the bars

 

[nputnam]

jwhitt are you thining of pfsense ?

 

[piasabird]

Linksys is Cisco, Duh!

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: piasabird
Linksys is Cisco, Duh!

not really. no where near it.

 

[Tazanator]

well with cisco you buy the hardware but you still have to buy a lic from cisco to run the IOS. that fee is why I went to imagestream gear, I got a few rebels (1U and runs up to DS3) put them into my home network and started playing/learning. down side is when SBC DSL dies it takes 3 hours thru support to convince them they have the problem and not me...but I got 4 of them to learn on....the msrp was around $8K (I paid less of course..) but i have learned and done tones in a commercial router now and understand the whats and why's.

 

[jwhitt]

pfsense yeah thats what i was thinking of ive never used it, however ive heard good things, though it has to be run from a beefyer machine, than what those soekris boxxes can put out.

 

[petey117]

a 3600 is not much better than the 2600
for instance, a 3620 has 2 modular slots, but a 1fe2w (2 fast e) will run you more than the router

I have a 2621 (2 10/100 built in) if you are interested. I can let it go for $390 shipped. it has 64/32MB and the enterprise plus IOS
p.s. a 2620 has only one 10/100 (i think i have one of those too, if you are interested)