Cisco or other Brand Router ?

jelexy

I’m preparing to sit the CCNA exam, hopefully in a few months time I will be CCNA!

I really do have some fundamental question regarding Cisco Router. Why Cisco router?? When you can buy some other brand for much less! And easy to learn…. Most of the other brand router I know have webpage based interface (unlike Cisco’s Command like based interface)

I’m moderately experience LAN network and pc hardware engineer for small charity office and I’m starting to question the above question…why Cisco router?

The simple network I run is not connected to the Internet, but I am planning to connect it using Router and the already exciting network components (i.e. switches).

My plan is to share a 1 Meg DSL broadband connection between 20 networked PCs using router as a default gateway.

The question is should I use Cisco Router or another brand for much...Much less price

For your information, I need to implement some restriction such as restricting to certain websites.


Thank for your time

keenon

jelexy wrote:

I’m preparing to sit the CCNA exam, hopefully in a few months time I will be CCNA!

I really do have some fundamental question regarding Cisco Router. Why Cisco router?? When you can buy some other brand for much less! And easy to learn…. Most of the other brand router I know have webpage based interface (unlike Cisco’s Command like based interface)

I’m moderately experience LAN network and pc hardware engineer for small charity office and I’m starting to question the above question…why Cisco router?

The simple network I run is not connected to the Internet, but I am planning to connect it using Router and the already exciting network components (i.e. switches).

My plan is to share a 1 Meg DSL broadband connection between 20 networked PCs using router as a default gateway.

The question is should I use Cisco Router or another brand for much...Much less price

For your information, I need to implement some restriction such as restricting to certain websites.


Thank for your time

to answer shortly....IF U PLAN ON TAKING A CISCO TEST LEARN TO USE A CISCO ROUTER AND SWITCH ..thank you

secondly any broadband router will work linksys, belkin or dlink

hc2ab

It's because of performance.

Unlike Cisco, most small company can't afford to write their own OS.

Alot of the network devices you saw actually is nothing more than a small PC running Linux. Some use special designed CPU(e.g. Intel IXP), but other than that it's not specially designed for network.

The problem with that is it won't be able to perform alot of work.

For example if you want to perform firewall you need to check every single packet coming in and going out. Now it won't be a problem if you are running 10 Mbps. But your CPU won't be able to handle it if it's going for higher bandwidth.

I'm no expert in Cisco router, infact never used one. But from what I guess, alot of the work is hardware based. For example, I guess that firewall on a Cisco router use alot less CPU because there will be some packet preprossecing to reduce CPU usage.

In short, it's just for the performance. Else any PC running windows server 2003/linux/Free BSD PC can do just about most of the basic thing a Cisco router can do.

Drakonblayde

You use Cisco when you need to be able to control your routing. While the cutsey poo broadband routers can in fact function as a real router (everyone I've run across has an option for RIP at least), most of the time you can't really properly call them routers... they're functioning as gateways doing NAT. For home and small office use, they're fine (my personal prefernce runs to Netgear). But try putting one of them in a somewhat larget network, and you're gonna have problems. Try putting one in an enterprise network and start the office betting pool on how long it takes it to melt down

2lazybutsmart

jelexy wrote:

I’m preparing to sit the CCNA exam, hopefully in a few months time I will be CCNA!

I really do have some fundamental question regarding Cisco Router. Why Cisco router??

OK, let's get this clear.

You NEED a cisco router when you WANT to take a cisco exam BECAUSE all cisco exams are engineered so as to prove your expertise in the area of networking using Cisco routers and switches.

Now that clear...

You DON'T NEED a cisco router if you WON'T take a cisco exam BECAUSE they're not the only company who manufacture routers.

kapish?

jelexy

Thanks for the prompt reply. All the reply so far are very imformative specially the reply from hc2ab.


it sound to me that Cisco Router is using some kind of special hardware processing (probably ASIC or DSP processor ) .

Drakonblayde

They do. They're not just using a cheap little mobo/cpu running a small version of Linux (like the Linksys routers.. yes, I'm aware Cisco owns Linksys, but they didn't do the R&D for their products). Cisco engineers their stuff for speed and functionality. For example, the 2600 access series routers range from 15Kpps (packets per second) up to 70kpps. The 3600 distribution series start at 40kpps and run up to 120kpps. The 7200 core series ranges from 100 to 900kpps.

That kind of performance you will not find in your average off the shelf router, and that's one of the reasons Cisco products cost so damned much (well, that and market share, though they have had to lower prices in recent years thanks to Juniper)