Why are Cisco routers so expensive?

We're a small business of 9 people just getting ready for our own ADSL
connection. (Previously we had an arrangement with a leased line to one of
our customers).

In trying to decide what router/firewall hardware to get I noticed that
Cisco routers are about 6 or 7 times more expensive that others like Netgear
(FVS124G) or Linksys*

Why the price difference? Does this mean other less expensive
routers/firewalls are not as capable at protecting our network?

Do they have more features that we should be considering? We have a
requirement for VPN but the less expensive routers seem to provide that.

Thanks for any insights.


(* I know Linksys are owned by Cisco now, but Linksys-branded routers are
cheaper that Cisco-branded routers.)

--
Regards,
Steve

"...which means he created the heaven and the earth... in the DARK! How good
is that?"

> We're a small business of 9 people just getting ready for our own ADSL
> connection. (Previously we had an arrangement with a leased line to one of
> our customers).
>
> In trying to decide what router/firewall hardware to get I noticed that
> Cisco routers are about 6 or 7 times more expensive that others like
> Netgear
> (FVS124G) or Linksys*
>
> Why the price difference? Does this mean other less expensive
> routers/firewalls are not as capable at protecting our network?
>
> Do they have more features that we should be considering? We have a
> requirement for VPN but the less expensive routers seem to provide that.
>
> Thanks for any insights.
>
>
> (* I know Linksys are owned by Cisco now, but Linksys-branded routers are
> cheaper that Cisco-branded routers.)


Take a look at the Draytek range. Very realiable and easy to set up.

Peter Crosland

Steve wrote:
> We're a small business of 9 people just getting ready for our own ADSL
> connection. (Previously we had an arrangement with a leased line to one of
> our customers).
>
> In trying to decide what router/firewall hardware to get I noticed that
> Cisco routers are about 6 or 7 times more expensive that others like Netgear
> (FVS124G) or Linksys*
>
> Why the price difference? Does this mean other less expensive
> routers/firewalls are not as capable at protecting our network?

No.

> Do they have more features that we should be considering? We have a
> requirement for VPN but the less expensive routers seem to provide that.
>
> Thanks for any insights.

Cisco is an expensive club to join - and there is a whole army of Cisco
qualified IT people out there who depend upon the kit being thousands.
How else can they charge over £750.00 a day to set-up such equipment?

A certain level of IT management think that just by putting Cisco in
they are safe - these same people were "never fired for buying IBM"
twenty years ago.

As the other reply outlined, look at the Draytek range.

"Steve" <root@127.0.0.1> wrote in message
news:C06925BE.1D6D%root@127.0.0.1...
> We're a small business of 9 people just getting ready for our own ADSL
> connection. (Previously we had an arrangement with a leased line to one of
> our customers).
>
> In trying to decide what router/firewall hardware to get I noticed that
> Cisco routers are about 6 or 7 times more expensive that others like
Netgear
> (FVS124G) or Linksys*

because they are built for a different type of market.

i need to declare an interest - to paraphrase a different poster i am a
cisco trained expensive resource...

have a look at the amount of tech info on the cisco site - then look at
Netgear......

the boxes are intended for differnet markets, and"tuned" to the things that
are important for each.

Consumer kit such as Netgear is designed as short lifetime, disposable kit
at knock down prices - in other words mainly for consumers.

The Cisco stuff is normally bought by a business from a capital budget. It
is usually supported by a 3rd party such as a reseller or a telco (so the
price they buy at is discounted compared to list), and depreciated over a
relatively long time.
>
> Why the price difference? Does this mean other less expensive
> routers/firewalls are not as capable at protecting our network?

The cisco are meant for long lifetime with full support. Box configs tend to
be tuned to suit the requirement by a trained engineer.

The consumer kit vendors assume that once the box is out of production, you
no longer get full support, including s/w upgrades and bug fixes.

You can argue about whether you like the tradeoffs this gives you, but given
the assumptions this isnt unreasonable.
>
> Do they have more features that we should be considering? We have a
> requirement for VPN but the less expensive routers seem to provide that.

The Cisco can do a lot more - more protocols, more features, but need more
expertise to drive them.

90% of the features are irrelevant most of the time - people still buy them
since the 10% they need are not always the same.
>
> Thanks for any insights.
>
>
> (* I know Linksys are owned by Cisco now, but Linksys-branded routers are
> cheaper that Cisco-branded routers.)
>
> --
> Regards,
> Steve
>
> "...which means he created the heaven and the earth... in the DARK! How
good
> is that?"
--
Regards

(E-Mail Removed) - replace xyz with ntl

On Mon, 17 Apr 2006, stephen wrote:

> The Cisco stuff is normally bought by a business from a capital
> budget. It is usually supported by a 3rd party such as a reseller or
> a telco (so the price they buy at is discounted compared to list),
> and depreciated over a relatively long time.

IME, it also has to be bought with a maintenance contract, or else one
doesn't get software upgrades. Unlike the upgrades by free download
available from many other suppliers' web sites.

> The cisco are meant for long lifetime with full support. Box configs
> tend to be tuned to suit the requirement by a trained engineer.

Which may or may not be the right answer, when a new exploit comes out
on a Friday evening, and everyone's clamouring for the services of a
trained engineer to block it. Being able to find one's way around
one's own router configuration does have its benefits.

> The consumer kit vendors assume that once the box is out of
> production, you no longer get full support, including s/w upgrades
> and bug fixes.

Whereas, in our experience, Cisco support assumes that once the box is
in the customer's hands, there is no support at all, unless you're
paying the extra for a support contract.

> You can argue about whether you like the tradeoffs this gives you,
> but given the assumptions this isnt unreasonable.

Indeed.

> > Do they have more features that we should be considering? We have
> > a requirement for VPN but the less expensive routers seem to
> > provide that.
>
> The Cisco can do a lot more - more protocols, more features, but
> need more expertise to drive them.

High-end routers like the typical Cisco product have more of the
functionality outboard, where it doesn't clog up the central
processor. That makes for more efficiency and greater throughput.
That's important when you have 10Gbit/s interfaces...

But in the context of a few Mbit/s on broadband, this is surely not an
issue. A retired peecee running *BSD or Linux could do the work
entirely in CPU, and have plenty in hand.

"horses for courses".

Saviour wrote:
> Your paying for the 'NAME' they are no better or worse than say the
> equivelent Dlink, netgear etc, the world wide waste of time has a
> lot to do with it, like MS & Intel they have cornerd (nerd being
> the app word here) market.

Actually not true, with Netgear, Linksys (which was the worst), D-Link
& 3 Com I had a regular problem, with my connection dropping/locking
up etc, I proved it wasn't the line so it had to be the kit.

Bought a Cisco 837 & everything went as smooth as silk...

The more expensive kit is more rugged & does cope with heavy usage
better than the cheaper kit does....

We put in quite a few different routers. The Cisco ADSL routers out of
the box really didn't offer much advantage over the others for most
users, but my boss still managed to flog them under the guise of being an
enterprise level product.
I can't remember the exact details but there was something very basic in
the port forwarding configuration that we just could get the Cisco to do
whilst other routers managed it.
And that java web interface..good god. Whenever
installing/troubleshooting one, we needed to take a laptop that we knew
worked with it because it had a habit of randomly choosing whether or not
it would load properly on different computers.

The 3com stuff in comparison is cheaper, but struggles on long line
lengths. I find our Westell at home to be absolutely super, but no
standard business managers have heard of them. They go for brands even
when there's no point.

Don't get me started on the cheapo Conexant routers


--
Colin
*Drop DEAD from the email address to reply*

Steve wrote:
> We're a small business of 9 people just getting ready for our own ADSL
> connection. (Previously we had an arrangement with a leased line to one of
> our customers).
>

Be very careful about buying an adsl router for an office environment,
requiring reliability.
The vast majority of routers I ahve used have been unstable, requiring
reboots on regular occasions, especially under heavy usage.

For an office envrironment, I would strongly recommend you stick to a
Draytek range, they have a very good reputation.

Personally, I have found the 3com officeconnect router (most recent
revision) to be the most reliable (the *only* reliable) router in the mid to
low range of prices.

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=82066

Gaz

On 17 Apr 2006, cw <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Don't get me started on the cheapo Conexant routers

I'll take the bait :-) Having had a Safecom 4-port (now at my sister's
home), using an Origo 4-port here, with a spare DabsValue/PTI/Conexant,
and another of them has been on loan to a friend for 3 years (!), and
a SAMR-4110 (or whatever the tiny Safecom 1-port unit is) on loan to
some other friends (now away for 2 months on a world tour!) all are
Conexant units, what was it you would say wrt them :-)))) Peter M

> Why the price difference?

=======================================

Salesmen have wives and kids to keep just like anybody else. And don't
forget contributions to pension schemes.

It's just the workings of the capitalist system.

I use BT Broadband.