Found two Cisco 2621 routers at work, should I try to acquire them?

Started a new contract (YAY!) and the first order of business is to clean out the old gear from the office/server room to make room for new desks. Tucked in a corner and forgotten for years were a couple Cisco 2621 (non-XM) routers. I thought that they might be useful so I powered them up to see what they could do. I also wish I took notes to bring home so I'm going from memory. One I'm pretty sure has 64MB RAM and 16MB flash. The other I'm less sure about, 32MB RAM and 8MB flash. Both have dual 10/100 ethernet and at least one DSU card each. I'm pretty sure the cards are T1 type.

I already have in my lab two 2620 routers and a 2610xm, all 64MB/16MB. I also have four DSU-56k cards to split among them.

Question is, are they worth attempting to acquire and for how much? The equipment is surplus and likely to end up being ground up for their copper content. I may be able to convince the powers that be to allow me to buy them. A quick look on a couple online retailer websites and the value is likely somewhere between $50 and $300. The impression I got is that the routers are worthless to them and if I offer $20 they'd probably let me take them.

What would I do with them? I'm thinking the lesser of the two would end up in my CCNA lab. The more capable of the two looks like something I might want to use as a firewall on my home network. I'm thinking of something that can give me SSH and/or VPN access to my home network. Having two ethernet ports on the routers would be a treat for doing CCNA labs. I have about a dozen other Cisco routers, all 2500 series single 10bT ethernet except one which has two.

I'll have to get a price for these routers, assuming I can save them from getting recycled. I'll need to find the IOS version on them, I wrote it down but forgot to take my note home. I've powered them up but I did not test the ports to see if any were zapped from lightning or something. Anything else I should look out for before taking them home?

Sounds like there may be switches I can make offers on as well. I'll have better info Monday or Tuesday.

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Comments

gorebrush

If they are a decent employer and you explain they are for learning, maybe they'll say they'll look the other way and one day they may "disappear" without them realising?

I mean it's not like those routers are very valuable in terms of currency, but for learning, any devices are fun to learn with.

I have all sorts of routers in my lab, and a lot of them now will be not much use for CCIE because they don't run v15 IOS (don't worry a great deal about that for now if you are at CCNA/CCNP level, I didn't have to really be aware of IOS nuances when I did those exams - you just need to learn the technologies)

gorebrush

Arguably though, you can emulate routers in GNS3 for free so I wouldn't spend *too* much acquiring these. They'll probably let them go for nothing. Try them!

Jon_Cisco

I don't think I would make it a financial deal. Since they are no longer usable for production I let them know you would be happy to use them for labbing if they were going to get rid of them anyway.

Good Luck

MacGuffin

On friday it was clear to me that they could not give them away. They want to avoid any accusations of theft, company property for personal use, or favoritism. There will have to be a bill of sale and money exchanged for their books. I'm just trying to figure out how much I'm willing to spend and how they will compute the value. Considering that they've already come to the conclusion that they'd have to pay someone to take it away I suspect I can get them real cheap. The other option is that they'd look at some sort of "fair market value" which could get to the $300 value I gave above.

I have router simulators but I found I prefer real equipment. What I have I got real cheap and it's been working well for me. I stepped away from my CCNA studies for a while and I found I have about a year before my CCENT expires. I'd like to pick up where I left off and get my CCNA cert before Christmas.

Since I'm thinking I could use one of them for my home network firewall I'm willing to spend a bit more. I have equipment that might do but a dual ethernet Cisco router allows for not only a nice network but also a real world application for my skills. If they want $20 then I'll do that. $50, sure. If they want $100 then I'd have to think about it. At least that's what I'm thinking now, might change my mind tomorrow.

Thanks for your feedback, everyone.

gorebrush

Make it $0.01 then.

They won't be worth $300 though, honest.

I certainly wouldn't spend $100 on it.

xnx

They're both worth $30-40 or each max nowadays

MTciscoguy

I seriously doubt I would pay more that $20 a piece for them, there was just a package of 4 that went for $25 on ebay with $15 shipping, I have got three 1841's for less than $150 and they were maxed out on memory and I have upgraded all of them to 15.xx IOS for no additional money because one of them I bought, the guy has all of the various IOS systems online for download for free.

cpartin

I wouldn't spend more than $20/ea, and only that much because of the T1 WICs. I do love hardware but I'm a big proponent of the GNS3 routers + real switches setup.

You're definitely not going to want to use those for your "production" home network. Those are very old, very slow routers that will almost certainly bottleneck your internet connection. It would be a good learning exercise but that's about it. See the link below for throughput speeds.

http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/downloads/765/tools/quickreference/routerperformance.pdf

MAC_Addy

Either get them from eBay or just use GNS3. Definitely not worth anything over $30 ea.

MTciscoguy

cpartin wrote: »

I wouldn't spend more than $20/ea, and only that much because of the T1 WICs. I do love hardware but I'm a big proponent of the GNS3 routers + real switches setup.

You're definitely not going to want to use those for your "production" home network. Those are very old, very slow routers that will almost certainly bottleneck your internet connection. It would be a good learning exercise but that's about it. See the link below for throughput speeds.

http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/downloads/765/tools/quickreference/routerperformance.pdf

Good information, thanks for the link.

Raisin

MacGuffin wrote: »

On friday it was clear to me that they could not give them away. They want to avoid any accusations of theft, company property for personal use, or favoritism. There will have to be a bill of sale and money exchanged for their books. I'm just trying to figure out how much I'm willing to spend and how they will compute the value. Considering that they've already come to the conclusion that they'd have to pay someone to take it away I suspect I can get them real cheap.

They sat for years collecting dust in the back of a room and nobody cared about what the books said about them then. I think you should offer them a dollar for them with the argument that since they were going to pay to have them shipped off as e-waste, then their fair market value is meaningless.

MacGuffin

Raisin wrote: »

They sat for years collecting dust in the back of a room and nobody cared about what the books said about them then. I think you should offer them a dollar for them with the argument that since they were going to pay to have them shipped off as e-waste, then their fair market value is meaningless.

I offered a dollar for them and I got a sort of deer in headlights look in return. I don't know if my boss felt insulted or what but an offer of $10 for both was approved. He and the person that handles the paperwork were out of the office this afternoon so I didn't get to take them home today. I took a closer look at the WIC cards and found they were T1 cards. There's three T1 cards so best I can do is connect a pair, unless I find another one while sorting through the excess gear. I did find another WIC, it's a DSU-56k. I already have four of the 56k WICs and having another might be nice. I'm assuming that I can convince them to throw that card in on the deal.

Also found today were two PIX 501 firewalls. Having not taken any Cisco security training I'm not even sure what these things can do. Are these worth anything? If so, how much? While I found two firewalls I found only one power supply. Unless I can dig up the missing power supply then I suspect it's worthless. Doing a quick Google search on PIX 501 and I see that they can be acquired for just a few bucks. My question on their value is more towards what they are worth in Cisco training than in their market value. If I can't use them for training then I'll gladly carry them to the recycle bin with the rest of the excess gear I have to carry out.

MacGuffin

cpartin wrote: »

I wouldn't spend more than $20/ea, and only that much because of the T1 WICs. I do love hardware but I'm a big proponent of the GNS3 routers + real switches setup.

You're definitely not going to want to use those for your "production" home network. Those are very old, very slow routers that will almost certainly bottleneck your internet connection. It would be a good learning exercise but that's about it. See the link below for throughput speeds.

http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/downloads/765/tools/quickreference/routerperformance.pdf

Concern over their throughput is noted. I'll see how it affects my network before relying on it for my internet. Considering I have the lowest speed broadband offered in my area I doubt the throughput limits of the 2600 would be noticed. There's plenty of other options I can think of to get a secure connection to my home network. I just thought that having the 2600 serve up a VPN would be a neat real world test of my skills. Would that PIX 501 I found be a good option? I assume I can walk out with that for another $5.

Raisin

MacGuffin wrote: »

I offered a dollar for them and I got a sort of deer in headlights look in return. I don't know if my boss felt insulted or what but an offer of $10 for both was approved.

Haha! $10 is still a great deal for the pair. You would've paid at least that or more in just shipping with ebay. Who knows maybe the low ball one dollar offer helped them accept $10 as a good compromise.

I'm not far enough along in my studies to be able to say if the PIX 501 is good or bad, but one trend I have noticed with Cisco products is that they don't change the look and feel too much when upgrading products. Even if the firewall lacks some critical features needed for the exam, odds are you can still practice a few commands and settings which carry over. I don't think you can go wrong picking it up for $5 even if it turns out to be mostly junk.

cpartin

I don't have much hands on experience with firewalls but based on my research as I'm gearing up for CCNA:Sec studies the PIX is pretty much irrelevant for certification purposes. I'm sure there's plenty of legacy installs still out there though and it never really hurts to have at least a little experience with older gear. Especially for only $5.

MacGuffin

Thanks all for the advice, I really appreciate it. I have the routers home now and had some time to play with them. In the deal with the $10 I got the two 2600 routers, three T1 WICs, a 56k WIC, console cables, and power cords. One router had a 32 MB DRAM stick in it and I swapped another from a spare router, giving it 64 MB RAM total now. No flash to spare so one was stuck with 8MB where the rest have 16MB.

I had three 2600 routers with four 56k WICs. With my recent addition I put four on my lab rack and the other router I'm going to see what I can make it do for me on my home network. Now I have on my lab rack a 3550 switch, two 2950 switches, two 2509 access servers, one 2621, one 2610XM, two 2620 routers, one 2514, and two 2520 routers. My home network includes a 2621 and a 2900 series switch as far as Cisco equipment is concerned. For spare Cisco gear I have five 2500 series routers, a couple switches, and the 2610 I stole the RAM from.

So far I've hooked up the serial interfaces in a way that I believe will be useful for labs. I still have to hook up the power and ethernet. It's getting to be a nest so I'm trying to run the cords in a logical way and tie them in neat bundles. I'll have to buy or make a T1 crossover cable to get the T1 cards to do something for me.

I was informed that the other Cisco equipment I found at work are spares. I could not take those home if I wanted to and I'm not sure I'd want to. The spare equipment is pretty old, even compared to what I have.

I still have some work to do before I can fire everything up and start doing some labs. I've been doing some spring cleaning in the basement while setting up the Cisco gear so not only will I have a better setup for labs I shouldn't be tripping over junk to walk to it.