Cisco Expands its Integrated Services Router Portfolio

"Cisco's introduction of the integrated services routers marked its continued commitment to provide customers a router portfolio engineered for highly secure, wire-speed delivery of concurrent data, voice and video services," said Joel Conover from Current Analysis. "With these new platforms for small offices and a new selection of services including wireless, Cisco delivers to an even broader range of customers the flexibility to choose from a myriad of options while maintaining a highly secure and resilient network."

New Cisco Integrated Services Routers for Smaller Offices

The new Cisco 1800 series and Cisco 800 series integrated services router models intelligently deliver highly secure concurrent services, including secure IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN capabilities, offering small office customers a single, resilient system. These high-performance new routers take full advantage of their broadband connections while providing key features for small offices such as advanced security, remote management and backup WAN links.

These new Cisco integrated services routers will be included in Cisco SMB-Class and Enterprise Business Ready solutions. Cisco channel partners will have opportunities to introduce integrated-network solutions and services that are sized to meet customers' current and future needs. Service providers will see these new integrated services routers as ideal platforms for managed services to provide SMBs and enterprise small office customers with a variety of infrastructure and services options.

Integrating Wireless into the Platforms

The entire line of Cisco integrated services routers now supports built-in or modular wireless 802.11 LAN coverage with industry-leading security. The new Cisco fixed-configuration integrated services routers are available as wireless models. Wireless interface cards are available for the Cisco modular integrated services routers, the Cisco 1841, Cisco 2800 series and Cisco 3800 series. Integrating high performance wireless into the routers provides customers maximum business agility in an easy-to-set-up and deploy form factor.

"Cisco's new wireless integrated services routers provide our company with high degrees of mobility and flexibility," said Dan Campbell, chief information officer of Watt Commercial, one of the largest and most experienced real estate developers in the western United States. "With the ability to offer built-in security features to wireless coverage along with remote management services, these new routers can meet the needs of our ever-changing mobile workforce. This easy to deploy device eliminates the need to build or remove a cabled network infrastructure each time we set up or tear down one of our over 30 remote offices. At the same time, the ability to effortlessly add a new wireless Cisco integrated services router to the network can easily support unplanned staff additions."

Securing the Network from Within

The Cisco integrated services routers are also part of the Cisco Self-Defending Network security strategy and offer the industry's most comprehensive portfolio of embedded network-security services. Cisco integrated service routers are able to deliver adaptive threat defense with advances in application security, anti-x protection, and network containment and control. This provides customers with a single, resilient platform to rapidly deploy highly secure networked business applications.

The new fixed-configuration Cisco 1800 and Cisco 800 integrated services routers ship with embedded virtual private network (VPN) encryption and acceleration hardware supporting IPSec AES and 3DES encryption. Cisco IOS ® security is designed to protect the complete Cisco router portfolio for pervasive security throughout the network, including stateful firewall, inline intrusion prevention, Network Admission Control (NAC) and URL filtering and support for MPLS based VPNs or VPNs utilizing IPSec AES and 3DES high speed encryption. Cisco Security Device Manager (SDM) version 2.1 supports all models of Cisco routers from the Cisco new 800 series to the Cisco 7301, providing customers an easy-to-use, web based interface for secure set up and management of router features including wide area networking (WAN), local area networking (LAN), security and WLAN.

Advancing Data and Bandwidth Management Services

Cisco is also introducing additional services which increase data and content management on the integrated services routers. New 16-, 24- and 48-port EtherSwitch modules include Power over Ethernet (PoE) capabilities for the Cisco 2800 and 3800 series integrated services routers to provide higher densities. Cisco Serial and Asynchronous High-Speed WAN Interface Cards provide flexible connections to legacy protocols or for WAN aggregation.

In addition, there are enhanced Network Analysis Module (NAM) features, bandwidth estimation in Cisco IOS 12.4 for user-defined quality of service (QoS), and updates to the Application & Content Networking System (ACNS) 5.3 that help manage traffic and optimize WAN bandwidth. Device management and enhanced caching help increase functionality, dramatically speed application deployment, and reduce operating costs and complexity, so customers can realize a faster return on investment.