SAN JOSE - Cisco last week released a crop of new routers aimed at boosting bandwidth, security and IP telephony support at enterprise branch offices.
Cisco's 3700, the company's newest high-end access router, combines increased throughput, advanced application quality of service (QoS) and IP telephony support for large branch offices, the company says. Upgrades to the Cisco midtier 2600 access router line also could help speed VPN encryption throughput in midsize branch offices while new small office/home office (SOHO) routers are aimed at extending similar features to teleworkers and small offices.
Cisco's 3725 and 3745 routers are two- and three-slot chassis that can each handle up to three internal Advanced Integration Modules (AIM) and three additional WAN interface card (WIC) modules for adding connections such as analog and digital voice support, and T-1 and ATM connections. Both 3700s take the same AIM, WIC and chassis modules as the 2600 and 3600 series routers. The 3725 is aimed at midsize and large branch offices, while the 3745 could serve as a WAN box at a large branch or a corporate headquarters.
The 3700 series also comes with an available 36-port 10/100 Ethernet switch module, which can provide in-line power to Cisco IP phones and Aironet wireless LAN access points over Category 5 cabling. The packaging of WAN, LAN and in-line power is a good direction for Cisco's router products, says Robert Bussabarger, network engineer for the city of Bend, Ore.
"In-line power just cleans up any implementation of IP telephony or wireless LANs" by letting phones or wireless LAN endpoints use one wire for network connectivity and power, he says. The city of Bend uses Cisco 2600 and 3500 series routers, and IP telephony products from Cisco.
Switches and routers that support in-line power and are hooked to an uninterruptible power supply can still provide phone service to IP phones in the event of a power failure, Bussabarger says. "It's a nice thing to have."
In addition to in-line power, the 3700 series routers can boost support for Cisco's Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST) from 48 to 140 phone users. SRST lets end users connect to the public switched telephone network and have limited call control features in case a branch-office WAN link is cut off from a central-office Cisco CallManagerIP PBX.
The Cisco 2691 is the latest 2600 series router. It provides the most VPN throughput of any 2600 box - 15M bit/sec of IP Security Triple-DES, which is twice as fast as previous 2600 models, according to the company. For small branch offices, the 2600MX router can provide QoS for data traffic sent over DLS connections and other WAN interfaces, and supports all standard Cisco WIC and AIM cards. The 1760 provides similar functions, but comes in a 19-inch rack-mountable enclosure.
The 3725 and 3745 cost $12,000 and $8,500, respectively, while the 2691 costs $6,300 and the 2600XM $4,200. The rack-mountable 1760 is priced at $1,600, and the 1721 costs $1,200.
The 827H, 77H and 71 SOHO routers cost $650, $550 and $350, respectively. All products will be available at the end of the month.
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