Just got a T1 and Cisco is telling me that I need an expensive router to prevent bottlenecks. Is that true?

Question

According to one sales rep, I need a $3,000 router to support the high throughput needed for a T1. We currently have a small, cheap SOHO router and we're having performance trouble. The sales rep said that while cheaper routers (even Cisco brand) will allow you to use the full 1.5mbps bandwidth, as more people join the network I'll have bottleneck problems because cheaper routers can't handle the throughput needs. We currently have 12 people in our office, but I want to be able to scale to 20 or 30 simultaneous users. What do you think? Can I get away with a $500 Cisco 870, or do I need to pay for a Cisco 1800 series?

I also want to do upload/download throttling (among other things like VPN and IP accounting), but the most important thing is that I want a router that is powerful enough.

Answer 1

Try getting a Linksys WRT54GL and upgrade the firmware with a 3rd party firmware version. You can get lots of high end features that way.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrt54g#Third-party_firmware_projects



Just make sure the version of router you buy supports this.



I seriously doubt that you need to spend $3000 for a connection for 30 workstations. Asking the guy at Cisco about this is like asking a car salesman whether buying an new car is a good idea.



Try looking into the links below. Good luck with this.

Answer 2

You do not need an expensive router to prevent bottlenecks. The Cisco 870 will work just fine. The important thing to consider if you have a bottleneck concern is not the router, but your overall bandwidth. The 1.5 Mbps that a T1 provides is not a lot of bandwidth. Most home users with a cable or DSL connection will get 2 to 4 times that amount of download bandwidth. However, the upload rate of a T1 is higher than cable or DSL and is the best fit for your company.



Most decent T1 providers will be able to give you a bandwidth utilization report. This is a graph that will show you exactly how much of your bandwidth you are using. If you are utilizing the full T1 you do have the option of bonding two T1s together to create a single 3 Meg pipe. If you are doing this kind of application THEN you will need the $2000-$3000 router.



I would also recommend contacting a professional IT vendor for your company. You should be able to find a reputable vendor that can consult you on this matter as well as your VPN, network infrastructure, etc. for a relatively low cost. After all, potential issues may not be related to your bandwidth OR router. This is where they come in handy. The best way to locate a vendor is to speak with other business owners and ask for a referral. Do not just call out of the phone book because you really don't know who you are going to wind up with. Also, any decent vendor is not going to try and sign you up for a monthly maintenance/service plan.

Answer 3

I would go with the router that the sales rep is suggesting, (have you thought about buying a use one) if he knows your plans, Cisco doesn't train them just to sell equipment.. they are trained to make sure that you are getting the best for your network and money.



Check out the page that this came from.. a good one about t1's and bottlenecks.



http://www.skullbox.net/networkmanagement.php





Bottlenecks are a common problem in networks and usually occur when a large amount of traffic is sent to and from a server, router, or switch. This is such a common problem that most servers now come with at least 2, sometimes 3 network interfaces. Combined with VLANs and network segmenting, multiple network interfaces are an easy way to prevent bottlenecks. However, there are other sources of bottlenecks that can occur on your network. For instance, The maximum line speed of a full T1 is 1.5 Mbps. This works out to around 200 kilobytes per second (KBps). True story: someone emailed the entire office of 55 people an excel spreadsheet that was 50 MB. Since everyone on the network had outlook set to check their inbox every 1 minute, the router was requesting (55) 50 MB files all at the same time.



You can also do a comparison of the 1800 and whatever you are thinking will work for $500.. here is the link for the 1800



http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps5853/products_data_sheet0900aecd8028a95f.html



If you don't think that this will do it for you, you might have to go up a bit..



Good Luck on your network..

Answer 4

I cannot speak for the cisco product line, but I have plenty of customers who get full throughput on T-1's with inexpensive routers. These are offices with as many as 50 people in them. SOme of the brands they are using include Linksys and SonicWall. If you presently have an inexpensive router why not try it fo a while and see how it works. If you start having problems upgrade. You may have problems if yyou have the router performing a lot of firewall related functions. For example if you use a sonic wall and get intrusion preventions, virus and email scanning, and antispyware detection, you need something a a bit more powerful than an entry level router to handle a lot of connections. Bottom line is that each year new and more powerful products are introduced to the market. Buy to serve your requirements today. Monitor performance and as your requirements change, then invest in technology.

Answer 5

Agree about the wrt-54gl with dd-wrt firmware. Very cheap and much easier to use than Cisco. Of course if you need near 100% uptime, you pretty much have to go with Cisco.