Rico, I would have to agree with the other posts, the Linksys is intended for Small Office, Home Office, not for a small branch. It would typically fit where you have somewhere between 1 and 10 users, not 100. The Linksys and other similar routers are clearly intended for the low-end, home user. While the Linksys boxes function well in the home environment, I would not deploy them at branch offices for a couple of reasons:
1) Configuration flexibility, they lack the flexibility of higher end products (for example, you cannot forward non-TCP/UDP traffic and the support for apps that dynamically assign ports such as netmeeting is very limited) 2) Hardware robustness, they are very low end gear, which is why they are inexpensive 3) Support, Linksys is targeted to support end users at their homes, not corporate environments where you have mission critical business apps Having said this, you should be aware that you have more choices than just Cisco or Linksys/SOHO routers. If you are looking for a small-midsize VPN/firewall device, you may want to look at products from Nokia and Netscreen. Both have full blown firewall and VPN capability, and it may be cost competitive compared to the Cisco 1720. Of course, a key question is "who is going to support the solution". If the local support people only know Cisco, then Cisco is probably the best choice. If you are going to do the support, you should pick a product you are comfortable with but one that is suitable for a corporate environment. Regards, Kent -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Rico Ortiz Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2002 9:02 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: OT: Linksys vs. Cisco [7:41829] I always thought of Linksys as "Toy" Home (SOHO) solutions. Lately I have been seeing post of people using Linksys' VPN solution. What is the different between Linksys VPN Solution (BEFVP41) and Cisco's 1751 VPN router. I am working on a project and if Cost is the only difference I will go with the cheaper solution. Now I am not talking about connecting up major sites with thousands of users, what we are talking about is a corprate setup with 7-15 Servers and approx. 100 users accessing the network (not all at the same time). Is the different price, packets per second (PPS), or are we just comfortable with the vendor (CISCO)... Just would like to see what other people think of these routers. Rico Ortiz Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=41916&t=41829 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
