Whats a Good home Cisco router

DevilWAH

Now I am in the new house I was thinking of getting a half decent home router, so possible one of the 800W series or old 700 series.

Does any one have any experience with these and points to look out for?

Do any of them run the security IOS with the IOS firewall?

Cheers

Aaron

rsutton

Do you need it to do anything specific? Cisco has a SoHo line of firewalls and they also own Linksys, the latter is simple, but has always worked well for me for home use.

DevilWAH

always run Lynksys at home pretty much since they have existed. I am looking for a router that runs the full cisco IOS. not come across the SoHO range,

RTmarc

Asa 5505??

jibbajabba

I love the 800 Series from Cisco - I myself have a 877W (Annex M model) and whilst this is indeed a brilliant router (especially with Advanced IP Services), it lacks stability on ADSL2+ .. Cisco can provide an ADSL firmware which fixes a lot of issues, but they are rarely to find online and you need to contact Cisco to optain them (or use other online "resources") ..

But apart from that - I couldn't fault it ... Having said that - that is now end of life it seems

Sett

Some powerful SOHO router with dd-wrt firwmare is nice alternative. You also get CLI for remote management and it comes with the routing daemon Quagga which is very IOS-ish. For security you can run IPTables. It'll be cheaper then the Cisco and you'll end up with even more features to screw around with.

crrussell3

If you have a decent older computer (P4 or greater) you can always run Untangle (Untangle, Inc.) as a UTM. Otherwise I would suggest what Sett said and go with a router that you can load dd-wrt or another 3rd party firmware like Tomato. I know Buffalo routers come preloaded with dd-wrt or the website has a very good matrix on which ones support what version.

MentholMoose

crrussell3 wrote: »

If you have a decent older computer (P4 or greater) you can always run Untangle (Untangle, Inc.) as a UTM.

I really like this option. You can use a *nix distribution purpose-built for router/firewall use, but you don't have to. Mostly any *nix OS can do routing and includes an advanced firewall so you can perform the low-level configuration yourself instead of using a GUI. So for example, you can learn iptables in detail, which is applicable to every Linux distribution out there, instead of a GUI which is limited to a specific distribution and may hide most or all of the iptables configuration.

One thing I'd watch out for would be power utilization. Old machines (especially some Pentium 4s) can consume a lot of electricity, and if you run it 24/7 it would probably increase your power bill significantly. Unless you have a extremely fast WAN connection, any PC should do fine. A cheap Intel Atom or something should be enough. If you do want to use an old PC, you can possible save electricity by under-clocking and under-volting it. For example, a 3 GHz P4 machine would probably be overkill for most residential Internet connections, so you could lower the CPU voltage and set it to 2 GHz or lower and still be fine while saving electricity and money.

ptilsen

I can't see using Cisco at home. If you want a full commercial appliance solution, something in the SMB sector makes more sense (E.g. Sonicwall). If you want something that good but cheaper and don't mind handling the hardware and OS yourself, something along the lines of Untangle, pfsense, m0n0wall, Smoothwall, or even Astaro would be good.

I'm not crazy about the idea of an old P4 type system, to be honest. You're talking about old hardware that is exponentially more likely to develop problems than a $40 appliance. If you want to self-build a powerful appliance, an Atom-type system with a small SSD or other flash media -- SDHC is great. The other route is to virtual, if you're the type to have a hypervisor cluster at home.

MentholMoose

ptilsen wrote: »

I'm not crazy about the idea of an old P4 type system, to be honest. You're talking about old hardware that is exponentially more likely to develop problems than a $40 appliance.

I agree. If you want a device that will just work without any hassle, go with something purpose-built. Mostly anything you buy will have a warranty and support. The main reason I like the old PC option is for learning purposes. In the past I used an OpenBSD server and it was a fantastic learning experience... the occasional problem actually enhanced that learning. Currently, though, I'm using a PIX. I've been meaning to upgrade to something newer (an ASA, or maybe an SRX), but the PIX works fine and I haven't found the time.