My own experience with routers...
I'm not exactly the strongest network guy around, but computer support has been my business my whole life. Recently I've been thrown into a few VPN setups. First was a friend who wanted a vpn to securely connect to his home network. He checked all the reviews, went with a ZyXEL VFG6005n. From starting with no real experience with VPN connections, we were unable to make any progress with L2TP/IPSec connection. PPTP we could connect in but if the computer was behind a router it would hold the vpn connection about 10% of the time. If the computer was on a public ip address without any firewalls between it and the ZyXEL the PPTP connection held good about 40% of the time.
If we had settings wrong, we could not figure them out.
About a year later I was given the job of setting up a multi-office VPN setup, and I'm not going to refuse a high-paying job. I had set up an RV110w for another office to have 1 router for two separate networks (I never set up VLANs before then, but it took me all of about 30 minutes to figure out how it all sets up on the RV110w). For this new job I picked up the RV120w's, set up the routers, put in the ipsec settings how I intuitively thought they should be, and the offices all connected with each other on the first shot, and they've been strong for 8 months now.
I picked up support with another business who has their main company records software system set up with VPN connections into a service vendor, and they were working with a ZyXEL ZyWALL USG 100. This is a very flexible, very capable router that can probably be programmed in a million customized and amazing ways. But it was not working correctly. Something with the router was cutting off the Comcast business router from allowing anything to reliably connect to the internet. I'm looking at the interface of this ZyXEL and my head is spinning trying to figure out all that is going on here. Oh and the clock is running, the business is down, nobody can do anything, the internet and the VPN connection must be re-established ASAP. Took me all of about a half-hour to set up an RV120w to what they need to operate their business.
The point I'm making here is for a small business that is not large enough to have a dedicated IT staff, there is a cost advantage to not having the most amazingly flexible programmable router. What you want is a router that (1) does what you need it to do, and (2) is simple enough so that you can find people capable of quickly understanding the device. Not everyone has a business set up next to a networking guru's shop.
That is where Cisco has a huge advantage. There is a lot of information out across the internet on configuring them. ZyXEL probably makes amazing hardware, but I am not in a position to see increased revenue by becoming an expert at supporting them, nor do I see a business without a dedicated IT staff make the correct financial move saving a few dollars up front on different brand routers.
I'm not exactly the strongest network guy around, but computer support has been my business my whole life. Recently I've been thrown into a few VPN setups. First was a friend who wanted a vpn to securely connect to his home network. He checked all the reviews, went with a ZyXEL VFG6005n. From starting with no real experience with VPN connections, we were unable to make any progress with L2TP/IPSec connection. PPTP we could connect in but if the computer was behind a router it would hold the vpn connection about 10% of the time. If the computer was on a public ip address without any firewalls between it and the ZyXEL the PPTP connection held good about 40% of the time.
If we had settings wrong, we could not figure them out.
About a year later I was given the job of setting up a multi-office VPN setup, and I'm not going to refuse a high-paying job. I had set up an RV110w for another office to have 1 router for two separate networks (I never set up VLANs before then, but it took me all of about 30 minutes to figure out how it all sets up on the RV110w). For this new job I picked up the RV120w's, set up the routers, put in the ipsec settings how I intuitively thought they should be, and the offices all connected with each other on the first shot, and they've been strong for 8 months now.
I picked up support with another business who has their main company records software system set up with VPN connections into a service vendor, and they were working with a ZyXEL ZyWALL USG 100. This is a very flexible, very capable router that can probably be programmed in a million customized and amazing ways. But it was not working correctly. Something with the router was cutting off the Comcast business router from allowing anything to reliably connect to the internet. I'm looking at the interface of this ZyXEL and my head is spinning trying to figure out all that is going on here. Oh and the clock is running, the business is down, nobody can do anything, the internet and the VPN connection must be re-established ASAP. Took me all of about a half-hour to set up an RV120w to what they need to operate their business.
The point I'm making here is for a small business that is not large enough to have a dedicated IT staff, there is a cost advantage to not having the most amazingly flexible programmable router. What you want is a router that (1) does what you need it to do, and (2) is simple enough so that you can find people capable of quickly understanding the device. Not everyone has a business set up next to a networking guru's shop.
That is where Cisco has a huge advantage. There is a lot of information out across the internet on configuring them. ZyXEL probably makes amazing hardware, but I am not in a position to see increased revenue by becoming an expert at supporting them, nor do I see a business without a dedicated IT staff make the correct financial move saving a few dollars up front on different brand routers.
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