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*sigh* Router Dying. Want something heavy duty. Cisco?

S

slashbinslashbash

Golden Member
I've gone through 'em all. Linksys, D-Link, blah blah blah, I've burned 'em all out. (I go through ADSL modems about once a year too, but I don't think AT&T will allow end-user-provided modems.) My current router is on its way out. It worked great until last week, but now it's needing a reboot about once a day. It's time to move up to something heavy-duty.... I'm thinking something Cisco branded (I know they own Linksys, but I want something higher-end.... something in a rackmount case).

I want something that will last me *decades* without burning out, and provide sufficient bandwidth for current typical home connections (ADSL/cable)... 10Mbit would be more than sufficient. I just want something wired... I will go with a separate Wireless AP, and I've already got a Dell Gigabit switch that has given >5yrs of yeoman service.

I know there is tons of used, old Cisco equipment at fairly cheap prices on eBay and other places (I know of a couple of local stores as well). I just don't know what I need to buy.

Can anybody help me out? Give me a model number or a range? With a quick search I found recommendations for the 1605-R (<$20 on eBay) and the 2621XM (<$200). Would either of these work? Is there a reason to prefer one over the other for typical home use? No VPN or anything out of the ordinary. As long as it works for web browsing, Skype, and Xbox Live, I think it will meet my needs. I don't mind digging into IOS, and I do have a serial cable somewhere around here. I assume these don't have web interfaces?
 
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Wish I could help but may I suggest, if you don't already have one, buying a UPS to connect your equipment to? That way you don't "burn" your equipment out so quickly.
 
Do you know how to configure cisco devices? If so, skip the cisco unless you really want to learn and have time to burn 😉
 
Your average Netgear or Linksys is going to outperform the 10-year-old Cisco equipment available on eBay.

If you're looking at "prosumer"-level equipment, the Netgear Prosafe line sits between low-end crap like Linksys and more enterprise-grade equipment.

You can also take a look at entry-level enterprise firewalls. Fortinet has some solid entry-level offerings, as does Sonicwall (although the latter tends to nickle and dime you). I don't have any experience with Juniper's entry-level offerings. Avoid the Cisco ASA.
 
Get a Cisco 1721 with 32mb flash and 96mb RAM and a WIC-1ADSL to go with it. Throw the "Advanced Security" IOS image on it, and you'll have a great little router for about $100.

And, no, your average Netgear or Linksys is NOT going to outperform it in any way.
 
Roll your own. I've gone from Coyote to BrazilFW to (currently) pfSense. Running on an old P3-450, with dual 3Com NICs. Boots off a CF card. Uptime is generally as long as it has power, so either the UPS has to die or I end up moving stuff around. All the options and performance you need, even on older equipment.
 
notposting said:
Roll your own. I've gone from Coyote to BrazilFW to (currently) pfSense. Running on an old P3-450, with dual 3Com NICs. Boots off a CF card. Uptime is generally as long as it has power, so either the UPS has to die or I end up moving stuff around. All the options and performance you need, even on older equipment.
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just curious, how much power does that consume?

i've been using a wrt54g with for the past 7 years, it is great with the tomato firmware.

recently bought another wrt54gl for 10 bux at a thrift shop, that one is working great as well 😀
 
vshah said:
just curious, how much power does that consume?
i've been using a wrt54g with for the past 7 years, it is great with the tomato firmware.
recently bought another wrt54gl for 10 bux at a thrift shop, that one is working great as well 😀
Click to expand...

It's around 33W from the wall. Will see spikes up to mid-40's (using Kill-A-Watt). Would have gone with an Atom or Via setup by now, but generally none of the dual-NIC Via models have NICs that will play nice with Linux and/or BSD. And the early Atoms had high power chipsets which offset the CPU savings.

It's running the P3-450, a 3com 3c905b and 905c NIC, and a little IDE to CF adapter with a 256MB Sandisk card.

I also have a WRT54GL, I just use it as an AP. Along with a D-link DI-524 (free shipping, free after rebate, and flashed to a DI-624! :awe🙂 which chills behind the TV in the living room and serves the HTPC, Xbox 360, and VZW extender. And a Motorola WR-850G which handles my PC and network printer. And a little cheapo 8 port switch in the basement, dishes to the feeds going elsewhere and the WRT54GL, WHS, and HDHR. You can tell everything has been added over the years.

We live in a townhouse...when we get our own place it I expect to be running 4 drops to every room and just get one big switch. edit: one big switch and a homerolled router 😉
 
any crapbox like a 6 year old p4-2.8 with a SD card boot of pfsense would smoke anything commercial 100x the price range of that box .

old SC420 poweredge 2gb ram - dual gigabit (or more) - ixnay the hard drive. heck strip it down it would probably run on near passive cooling if you underclock it.

don't worry about watts man. to me; paying a few bucks a month so i'm 100&#37; up; so i have zero dropped frames when i'm watching a BR over network; etc. is worth it.

While i built my htpc with massive horsepower it can be the nas; the transcoder (ipad/iphone); it can be the tmpgenc; security system; all in one. stable. vmware to boot.
 
Nocturnal said:
Wish I could help but may I suggest, if you don't already have one, buying a UPS to connect your equipment to? That way you don't "burn" your equipment out so quickly.
Click to expand...

I have had my last three routers plugged into APC UPS's. Doesn't seem to do much for them.

theevilsharpie said:
Your average Netgear or Linksys is going to outperform the 10-year-old Cisco equipment available on eBay.
Click to expand...

All I need is something to handle 10Mbps, max. I think the older Cisco equipment can handle that.

RadiclDreamer said:
Do you know how to configure cisco devices? If so, skip the cisco unless you really want to learn and have time to burn 😉
Click to expand...

I won't mind it. I've configured iptables firewalls before on FreeBSD. I've also thought of trying to earn a CC** for a career backup plan. This would help me see if that's something I'd like to pursue, no?

notposting said:
Roll your own. I've gone from Coyote to BrazilFW to (currently) pfSense. Running on an old P3-450, with dual 3Com NICs. Boots off a CF card. Uptime is generally as long as it has power, so either the UPS has to die or I end up moving stuff around. All the options and performance you need, even on older equipment.
Click to expand...

I've thought about it. I've got an older Athlon XP system and a couple spare NICs. Power usage was my main concern. I will look more into it, thanks.
 
CC** is worthless without experience unless that is a CCIE/CCDE.

you have serious power issues if your APC didn't save the router. like perhaps another device which was not properly grounded/protected shot power into the ethernet side of things?

APC will pay for your losses if you can prove it was not your mistake for failure. You do know that having bad grounds or unplugging a ups from the wall (while on) is serious no-no 🙂
 
Emulex said:
CC** is worthless without experience unless that is a CCIE/CCDE.
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I know, it's not super serious, just something I've thought about.

you have serious power issues if your APC didn't save the router. like perhaps another device which was not properly grounded/protected shot power into the ethernet side of things?

APC will pay for your losses if you can prove it was not your mistake for failure. You do know that having bad grounds or unplugging a ups from the wall (while on) is serious no-no 🙂
Click to expand...

I've never seen the improper ground light turn on on one of my UPS's. I don't think I've unplugged one while on either. I've got all my networking devices (DSL modem, router, switch, computers) plugged into UPS's.

So you're really inclined to think this is a power issue? I just thought that all routers sucked, and for some reason my usage was higher than normal. I did have a D-Link that lasted a good 3-4 years, but it eventually died as well. I'm not sure if my terminology is giving you the right impression. "Burning them out" is just my way of thinking about it. Gradually, they simply fail and have to be rebooted more and more frequently in order to properly route packets. There might be parts of them that still work (e.g. might be able to log into the web interface) but my internet connection goes down until I unplug and re-plug the router. (What would it cost for these companies to include a damn power on/off switch?!) I don't think I've ever had one fail so completely that it would not at least power up and work properly for a few minutes.
 
Emulex said:
CC** is worthless without experience unless that is a CCIE/CCDE.
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No cert is worth more than experience, even a CCIE. We just had a CCIE leave and we're so much better off for it. Somehow he managed to make it through all of the tests and labs but he was so damned lazy that the cert was nothing more than a title. He might've made a good sales engineer, but he was a terrible engineer. I don't even have any Cisco certs yet and I think I did better in practice than him.
 
but I don't think AT&T will allow end-user-provided modems.
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In case you didn't know - yes they will. Provided its compatible. In most cases there is no need. Also if you have a business line with statics you must use the specified AT&T dsl CPE. (Netopia router).

FYI: I've never had any network equipment burn out. I had one power supply fail in a Hotbrick, but that was an easy fix - blown chinese cap - cheap ass 5V power supply that I quickly fixed. But its not like a something that you can use up.

I highly suggest the Buffalo WHR-G54-HP

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833162134

Either stock firmware or reflash with DD-WRT or tomato. This device is rock solid and awesome.
 
Emulex said:
old SC420 poweredge 2gb ram - dual gigabit (or more) - ixnay the hard drive. heck strip it down it would probably run on near passive cooling if you underclock it.
Click to expand...
My home's SBS 2003 server has been running on a Dell SC420 for five years now. Mine's got 2 GB of ECC and a 2.55 GHz Celeron two 160 GB SATA hard drives, and the default ATI Rage Pro PCI card. My Kill-A-Watt says it draws 80 Watts in idle.

The good news is that it carries 100% of my Internet traffic through its ISA Server 2004 firewall (including my Vonage phone service) and it's been running 24/7/360 for five years without any downtime or crashes.

Just for comparison, my "new" Dell 440SC server, with 8GB of ECC memory, a E6300 processor, two 1 TB Hitachi disks, and the onboard video uses 85 Watts at idle. With both Dells you'd need some work to underclock them since Dell doesn't provide any speed settings in the BIOS.
 
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A Linksys WRT54GL with the 3rd party Tomato firmware will give you all the reliability you'd ever want. Like someone said earlier in the thread, you need to be running whatever you have on a battery backup unit. The surges and sags eventually kill routers.
 
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