Trying to find the right router to use – we'd like to go Cisco. We have ~60 programmers that do a lot of remote server work. Will grow to 100 programmers by the end of the year.
We've talked to companies that sell Cisco routers. While they make recommendations, we feel that the sales guys may be selling us an overkill solution.
What kind of company (that is not linked to sales of routers) can provide a service to recommend the right kind of router for our company? There are lots of network engineers out there, but am looking for some company that focuses on advising a network solution.
Any suggestions of companies are welcome.
Best Answer
I think you're probably worrying about the problem too much. 100 users are unlikely to be that demaning, even if they are heavy data users. Realistically you could probably get any sort of router to connect your company to the internet, and stick a couple of stacked 48-port gig switches behind it to connect up all your desktop machines in the office. Any basic cisco router (or any current router from another vendor, or even a linux box) will probably work fine.
I agree that vendors will try to upsell you a lot and try to add on things like voip, remote vpn access, etc. In my experience you can add a few specialized boxes to your network to do those sorts of things as the need arises. Don't get sucked in to the idea that you have to buy some sort of modular 'solution' from a vendor.
Here's a real-life example: I ran the network at a scientific computing company that supported about fifty users. We had a SonicWall internet appliance for the external router and firewall. That device got flaky so I put an extra network interface in a desktop machine running CentOS and used it to replace the SonicWall. That configuration ran fine for several years - no routing or firewall issues to speak of.