Cisco Enterprise Routers Reviews

The primary use case depends on the customer's kind of business. From my experience, I'm serving clients with the enterprise internet gateway, BGP router, and internal enterprise campus network for our enterprise networks, et cetera.

Cisco is the industry standard. I tend to use it a lot. 

The resilience of the devices is very good.

It's good for internet-based networking.

The documentation is very good.

The solution is stable. 

It's scalable. 

For the Enterprise Router, especially for Cisco, we want Cisco to have a less simple product and a more scalable product, so we don't have to choose from so many series. We'd like one device fit for many use cases. The scalability must be simplified.

The lead time is pretty bad. It's worse than other products. We'd like them to speed up their speed of delivery. It can take almost 300 days at this point in order to get the devices. 

They are pretty expensive devices. 

I've been dealing with the solution for ten years or so.

The is a very stable product. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. I'd rate the product eight out of ten.

The solution can scale, however, it is complicated. there are so many different series to choose from. 

I'd rate the ability to scale nine out of ten.

Their support is perfect. They are very helpful and responsive. 

Positive

We deliver many various solutions and many services. We're bundling with our connectivity products, such as routers, switches, wireless, SD-WAN, and Zephyr.

We are exploring Cisco SD-WAN, Viptela, and Meraki, and then we're in the progress of exploring HPE and Aruba.

I'm very familiar with various Cisco solutions.

The main competitor is Huawei, and they have a bit of an advantage as they are less expensive than Cisco. 

In terms of the initial setup, Cisco is the leading technology here, so the users are also the biggest in the world. We can easily find any necessary documentation about the configuration, the use cases, and best practices. For me, the setup of Cisco is okay. It depends on our documentation.

I'd rate the ease of setup based on the available documentation eight out of ten. 

We are implementors. We can set up the solution for clients. 

The solution is more expensive than other options. I'd rate it six out of ten in terms of affordability.

We are a service provider. I implement the solution for clients. 

I'd rate the product eight out of ten. The product quality is very good. They are, however, a bit expensive. 

We are using Metro circuits to connect branches on the different bins and I use Cisco Enterprise Routers to route the traffic.

The main reason for using Cisco Routers is for the proprietor routing protocol that it has.

The security could improve for Cisco Enterprise Routers. I understand there's a security appliance that is separate, but in terms of the router, there can be improvements made to prevent unwanted users from accessing the router or trying to manipulate the traffic that is passing through it.

I have been using Cisco Enterprise Routers for approximately 10 years.

Cisco Enterprise Routers is a stable solution.

We have not had a problem with the stability of Cisco Enterprise Routers.

I would rate the technical support of Cisco Enterprise Routers an eight out of ten.

Having to do system troubleshooting and assisting takes time out from the operation of the business. From an operational or technical standpoint, we who install or implement the devices need to be hands-on. Especially when it's a physical problem, not necessarily programming or configuration. There are times when you have issues with a module or it's not operating the way it's supposed to operate and you don't know if it's a manufacturer cause. Trying to troubleshoot these issues should be easier.

Okay. Right. And what advice would you give to other people who want to implement Cisco Enterprise Routers?

I am a trained Cisco engineer, the implementation was not that complicated.

Based on my experience with other routers, Cisco has proven to be reliable. And from the routing aspect of things, it is really the product of choice for most of my customers. Whenever they want to implement any networking, most of them will request Cisco products.

I rate Cisco Enterprise Routers a nine out of ten.

Comparing the 3900 to the 3800 routers, the class of routers has improved over the 3800. Most of the modules are gigabit ports and you can receive 10 gig ports with them, compared to the older version where it's a 100 megabit port. 

Based on how the industry is going, where most connections are way over 100 megabits. If you're receiving an internet connection from a business customer, it's going to be more than 100 megabits, and sometimes 250 megs, or even 500 megabits. To have a router that is 100 megabits defeats the purpose of having a faster internet connection. The 3900 Series really solved that problem, where there are gigabit ports. If you want to aggregate ports to receive, for example, 10 gigabits or more, you can always do that by putting in a module SSP port. It has improved a lot.

In my company, the tool is used mostly in our branches.

The benefit from the use of the product in my company stems from the fact that it is a tool that is considered to be a leader in the market while offering good support and stability, making it an overall good product.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that the product's overall look and feel is good, making it a user-friendly tool.

The product's pricing is an area that is too fuzzy to deal with, in my opinion, making it an area where improvements are required.

The product's deployment phase can be made slightly better and more intuitive.

I have been using Cisco Enterprise Routers for ten to twelve years.

It is a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Around 110 people, consisting mostly of members of my company's IT team and network administrators, use the solution in my company.

During weekdays or normal days, it is easy to get hold of Cisco's support team, but during holidays or weekends, it becomes challenging and problematic for users to reach the support team. It is important to know that the support offered by Cisco is comparatively better than the support offered by its competitors.

The solution's deployment phase is okay since it is a process that may not seem too easy, but at the same time, one may not experience any hassles.

I rate the product's deployment phase a five out of ten.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

Considering the configuration phase that takes time, the solution can be deployed in a time frame between three to four hours to two or three days.

In comparison with other products, I rate the product's ability to provide my company benefits in terms of time and funding at twelve or thirteen, even if the benchmark you provide is ten to the maximum.

I rate the product's price a six or seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is extremely expensive, and ten is very cheap. Apart from the licensing costs attached to the solution, a user has to pay towards the product's RMA and support costs.

My company's support team, consisting of 20 to 25 engineers, deals with the product's upgrades, failover testing, and everything else.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for connectivity and routing. It offers secure panel access. 

Enterprise routers help us to build a secure panel between our data center going to our other remote sites. It also helps with routing and is the main point of entry for our infrastructure.

The routing features are quite useful.

It is a stable solution.

The product can scale.

It's easy to set up.

Technical support ie very helpful. 

We haven't really had any issues. They have recently upgraded the technology and have recently improved many things. Most of what we needed they recently updated. We aren't missing any features. 

The solution is expensive.

I've been using the solution for ten years. 

The stability is excellent. I would rate it nine out of ten. There are no bugs or glitches. It is reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability is good. I would rate it around eight out of ten. 

We have ten people who use it directly right now. 

Technical support has been quite good, and we are quite satisfied with the level of support on offer. 

Positive

We previously used Juniper and Extreme routers. Since I am mostly exposed to Cisco products, I do find Juniper routers to be a bit difficult to manage. 

The solution offers a pretty simple implementation. For the basic setup, it's really easy. The complexity comes to them when it comes to deploying the routing for the whole solution based on the company's requirements.

It usually requires four people to deploy and maintain the solution. That said, it depends on the data center and the size of the environment.

We have witnessed an ROI while using the product. 

I'd rate the solution two out of ten in terms of affordability. It's an expensive product. 

We're using version 15 or thereabouts. We updated it less than a year ago. 

Depending on the budget, I'd advise new users to go with Cisco. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We use Cisco Enterprise Routers or WAN connectivity and switching in multiple areas, such as data centers and branch offices.

The most valuable feature of Cisco Enterprise Routers is that they are robust and resilient. 

The overall price of Cisco Enterprise Routers should be reduced, it is expensive.

I have been using Cisco Enterprise Routers for approximately 10 years.

Cisco Enterprise Routers are stable.

The scalability of Cisco Enterprise Routers is good.

We have approximately 250,000 users using this solution in my organization. We have an additional 10,000-20,000 contractors and a couple of partners who use the solution.

The support from Cisco Enterprise Routers is good.

Cisco Enterprise Routers has a simple implementation. The timeframe it tale for the implementation depends on the solution we are deploying. It varies up to ten hours. We use Cisco's wireless, routers, switches, and a few firewalls.

We used an integrator to do the implementation.

We have approximately 20 engineers that do the deployment and maintenance.

The license of Cisco Enterprise Routers is too expensive compared to other solutions. As we try to increase the bandwidth, it gets even more expensive. There is an annual license needed to use the solution.

I would recommend Cisco Enterprise Routers to others who need an enterprise solution.

I rate Cisco Enterprise Routers an eight out of ten.

I use Cisco Routers in a variety of technologies, including TLS, BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, VRF policy-based routing, and VPN in some routers.

They are the most stable, have the highest availability, and are the most reliable on the market.

The price could be lowered.

I have been using Cisco Enterprise Routers for ten years.

We are not using the most recent version, but it is not the oldest.

Cisco Enterprise Routers is very stable.

Cisco Enterprise Routers is a scalable product.

We have more than 500 users in our company. We have a team of 50 IT technicians in our company and 5,000 employees that are distributed in approximately 70 locations in the country. Each location has Cisco Enterprise Routers on its premises.

We are pleased with Cisco's technical support.

I use many of the Enterprise Routers. I use now Cisco Routers 4420, 4431, 4450. I use IOS, IOS XE.

I have deployed many routers. All of our technologies have been applied to the routers.

We don't need a license if we use IOS for basic, IT-related tasks. However, if we want to use a security feature, advanced IT features, video conferencing, voice conferencing, or UT, we must purchase a license for each of these features.

Cisco Enterprise Routers are not the cheapest routers on the market, they are expensive.

I would recommend this solution other others who are considering it.

I would rate Cisco Enterprise Routers an eight out of ten.

We have been using Cisco Enterprise Routers for building micro-networks and Internet networks for main VPN services, high-speed Internet access, and extending the network of customers.

I have found the most valuable feature of Cisco Enterprise Routers to be the simplicity of the command-line interface, it is very intuitive as to how the commands need to be configured for a specific use case. 

Over time things have changed where Cisco has not invested in improving the orchestration and simplifying it for people who do not want to get into the details. Cisco has not gone into that focus. Technologies such as MPLS and VPN, have become very difficult to use for many service providers. This is where you have the admission of software-defined networks which brought in a lot of simplicity when it comes to routing and functionality.

What Cisco Routers needs to do to improve is what they have already done with the SD-WAN solution. It is a very, elegant solution, but even though it is a pretty comprehensive solution, one of the problems with the Cisco solution is many customers do not use all the features. They must have a category of customer premises equipment, specifically for the managed service providers and enterprise networks that can be much more cost-effective from an IT perspective. The configuration can be simplified at the GUI level. It should be easier because any telecommunication provider only has an enterprise network nowadays. 

When I am running an SD-WAN as an enterprise, I have features that are capable of finding an alternate path when there is latency. I have yet to find a solution to integrate them. For example, if I am a managed services provider for an SD-WAN customer, how do I make sure that this feature is automatically taken care of by the service provider side by monitoring its own option. This managing from the service provider side in the SD-WAN solution does not exist, it is all only static provisioning right now. When you are doing the original provisioning it happens, but dynamically when the network changes due to quirks in the network, how does it actually handle it. If there was this kind of features it would help Cisco to become the best in the process. You need to have a more solution-specific understanding.

The parts management teams have to come up with features that will benefit the service provider and the enterprises if they want to be the best.

I have been working with Cisco Enterprise Routers for approximately 30 years.

The stability and bugs are more related to a Cisco internal issue because when I worked in the Cisco team in research and development, their internal procedures were very complex and they had a very bloated OS software. All those problems have been solved in approximately 2007. They have improved a lot of processes and areas. They brought more modularity into the code and they have strict mechanisms for fixing the software. Earlier the problem was that when they fixed the problem for one router, they had to go and fix the same issue in different code bases. For example, if there was a bug in QoS, Quality of Service, code and it was on a router that was also found to be in all the versions which of many other routers, they will fix on few of them. They will not fix many others because that would cause problems later in the deployment of the solution. This method has backfired a lot for Cisco.

They learned from their mistakes and started modularizing the code, they standardized the quality of service across the platforms and those problems went away. 

Now they have much more modular code and have done a very good job standardizing the CLI. This is what is helping the orchestration because the more complexity you have across different platforms it makes it very difficult for orchestration. You are able to do it but it makes it even worse. They needed big teams to manage the bug fixes and to understand how the bugs were going to be fixed. Now with the tools that are available, they have simplified a lot of the processes. The concept of segment routing and how can it be used for micro-segmentation, are wonderful features.

The lack of talent is the major challenge and is something that is widening. However, orchestration solutions will actually help. The more proficient technical support personnel can focus on the troubleshooting whereas the entry-level personnel can focus on the orchestration part and manage the services. The troubleshooting can be taken care of by the more technologically advanced personnel at level two support and the level three technical support should be in the position to go right down through the levels and be able to see what is going wrong and fix the issue.

There was a time when we had excellent technical support in Cisco. It has been 10 years since I left Cisco and one thing I can say is that over a period of time, the technical support of Cisco diminished. The problems were more related to the internal processes within the system and the hiring processes that were used. When you are hiring people for technical support you cannot just hire somebody based on CCIE or CCNA certification. You need people who are real engineers who understand the protocol at the level of detail that is required at the level of implementation and the software must be understood extremely.

Unfortunately, in CCIE they learn how to pass the exams, but they really do not know how to build real networks. There are people who are very good at networking in configuring but they are extremely bad when it comes to understanding computer architecture, what is error correction memory, how does it affect software performance, and what kind of problems it can bring. They have no idea at all. This causes a problem when attempting to troubleshoot the equipment.

These problems are what Cisco and all others face. Cisco has invested a lot in their teams, but if you have managers who do not know how to recruit the right type of people then you face a lot of challenges. Those working on routers, switches, networks, and their environments must have a good understanding of what an operating system is, what is the computer architecture, what is the architecture of the router, and what it is implemented in the protocol. It is very important to be aware of the tools that are in the customer environment, how is the customer using them, are they using them in the right way, or in the wrong way. These things also must be understood.

Most of the help personnel just focus on the software side of the problem. They are not worried whether the customer is getting the connectivity in the right way or not, you have to be supporting in the right way. When I was in a company called Wipro, which is a Cisco partner, I found that they did not know even know how to handle the information correctly. You feel a lot of challenges because of the way hiring is done. 

I am not sure how they handle new features or functionality nowadays but I used to do technology transfer to help people understand how a particular feature or the new functionality that is developed in the platform was supposed to be working, such as certain setup commands that I have used for configuration, the expected outputs, and some of the basic troubleshooting that was needed.

The prices of Cisco are mostly fair. Cisco is similar to BMW for the networking industry. If you compare it with other vendors, such as Huawei, they cannot match the service. Cisco solution serves as the BMW of the networking industry in the way that the others are trying to live up to those expectations. Cisco is justified in some of the pricing, not all the pricing, if you go to the Cisco website, you can see the detailed documentation.

I am currently working with Nokia and it is very difficult to find where the documentation is on the web. They do not even provide the datasheets, and they are only provided them on request for the equipment. How will a person really appreciate a company when it comes to that kind of solution? I can go to the Cisco website and look at the SD-WAN to see the validated designs, all the information, and understand them just by creating myself an account but not with Nokia. I am even trying to figure out what are the protocols that Nokia will use in their SD-WAN solution. It would be much easier to have documentation to compare the advantage and disadvantages. Cisco's openness in their documentation is one of the most appealing strengths of the company, it really gives you an indication of how open they are. The documents detail how much money they spend on it, and how they are helping the industry from an infrastructure perspective. Additionally, Cisco gives you talented individuals. There are people who are self-learners who will go to the website and look at the documentation, learn, and understand the software to find which functionality has a bug. When it comes to a Nokia, they will only help you if you are a managed service with a contract. Otherwise, you cannot even deploy their equipment, this is not a good practice.

I justify part of the pricing that Cisco has but not the full model. There is a 25 percent price increase over the Nokia and it is justified for what Cisco delivers to its customers. I am calculating not just the pricing for just the routers, but the overall price, including openness and how much support they can handle. They are excellent. If you run a network without software support from Cisco and call technical support they will help. For example, they will indicate the problem exists because you upgraded the software and if you have a contract, you can automatically download the software to fix the problem. This would not be the case with Nokia, you will need them to be involved, they select the managed services, and that makes it extremely difficult for people to afford. 

Cisco is way too expensive for small and medium businesses. They must lower their prices in the lower range equipment. They need to make sure that they do not ignore that market segment because they will lose it for good. They will be gone from the Asian market and they will survive with only those companies which are extending their arms into India and South Asia because of the large companies that are there. They will not be able to penetrate the markets in all small and medium businesses and will not thrive.

I have evaluated Huawei and Nokia solutions. Nokia solutions are pretty good. However, in their software, I have heard from many of my friends, they have some type of secrecy that they follow that is very difficult for me to digest.

It is important for smaller companies to focus on understanding how deployments are done. The learning should be done from the perspective of deployment operations because whether you are an enterprise or a service provider you are buying these routers and offering a service to the internal or external customers as a service provider. You need to understand how these platforms and overall solutions help you to build a network faster and which part of it reduces the cost. Many of the smaller companies do not understand the operational expenses well enough, they will end up doing all kinds of Ad Hoc configurations with half the knowledge, and they will run into problems and it will be expensive.

I rate Cisco Enterprise Routers a six out of ten.

We perform immigration checks in Pakistan. We have around 26 distributed check posts across Pakistan. We need network links to collect the data, implement the stop list, and other immigration-related data.

For immigration, we use an MIS system that helps the immigration personnel. This requires a network infrastructure at its core. We need to ensure the availability of data and to ensure data security.  round 90 to 95 people use it within our organization.

In itself, Cisco is a reliable product and does not require any major changes. We have utilized Cisco for around 15 years, and in that time, there has hardly been any incident to my knowledge that a router suddenly became faulty, or started to malfunction. Cisco is an excellent and very comprehensive product, and we have no issues with that.

It's not really about how Cisco can be improved, but the utilities around it. For example, Fortinet has a good firewall and useful auditing tools with it. It also allows establishing centralize infrastructure, just by installing a Fortinet client software, VPN software, at the client end. However, we know that Cisco is also providing such a product in the name of AnyConnect. It is a concern over the cost aspect because of the budget we have available, Fortinet is much cheaper than the Cisco product, including the functionalities it provides. Cisco routers are an expensive product. Regarding Cisco usage in the future, it depends upon the increase in the immigration checkpoints. If our government decided to open 10 more immigration checkpoints, and other sites related to those, it would require more procuring of hardware, including the number of routers to support this. 

We have been utilizing Cisco routers and switches, since 2004. We are a police organization in Pakistan.

We still use the Cisco router 1721 Modular Access Router, which is now obsolete but still works. It is very stable. We have some very old, like 16, 17 years, old models. We have been using Cisco for around 15, or 16 years. We are satisfied with Cisco. 

It's highly scalable. There should always be provision for scalability, as we procure many routers with modular capability. For example, we know that modular routers are capable of extension via WAN interfaces and other interfaces.

We are very much satisfied with Cisco technical support.

Some companies provide initial licenses very cheaply, as do Cisco, but when you want to renew or expand something, the licensing becomes expensive. 

The network team proposes that we might utilize Fortinet instead of Cisco in the future. There is no problem with Cisco, but this is when we might move towards Fortinet because Fortinet can provide these things that are very much cheaper than Cisco, including additional resources.

I would rate cisco 9 out of 10. Cisco is the network equipment leader. It introduces new features; it's the trend maker. The trade-off is cost. Cisco is highly recommended, subject to the availability of funds. It's all about the resources you have and how much you want to invest. We are the customer. However, we are also studying Fortinet and its comparisons and things like those to finalize the procurement process.