The Bottom Line: Buying a cisco 2500 series router is a smart investment in getting your company on the internet as it is reliable and supports virtually all network standards.

Pros: Widespread availibility, well supported, many integrated protocols, expansion packages availible
Cons: The administration tools preloaded are a pain in the butt to use.

Cisco Systems Inc. provides a world standard of quality, interoperability, and reliability known and recognized in every country in the world. The 2500 series router from Cisco Systems is a family of about 20-25 router products that provides a customized router system for LAN to WAN high speed access.

Routing Features
The Cisco 2500 series routers provide support for a wide range of networking protocols and technologies. Integrated support for on-board firewalls, IPSec, TCPIP, IPX, RIP, IGRP, EIGRP, and RTP provides full support for 90% of the world's networks. In addition to the router's protocol support that comes standard on each router, the routers are configurable for data load compressions that are internet-standard ranging from simple header compression to complete packet compression and packaging.

Hardware Features
The Cisco Routers provie some hot hardware for dealing with routed and routing protocols. A Cisco 2500 series router can be stocked with a MC68030 microprocessor, up to 8MB flash memory, op to 6MB DRAM memory to support high data capacity and large routing tables (expandable to 16MB flash and 18MB DRAM), provision for ISDN and serial access, provision for heat guarding, and sturdy construction.

The Cisco 2500 router usually wieghts between 9 and 12 lbs and is equiped with 2 serial, 2 ethernet, 1 phone, and 1 BRI port. Thanks to heat shielding, the router is able to operate in high temperature environments such as those created by server closets and workrooms. The router has support for modem remote access so as to allow off-site administration in an effort to increase productivity and fault tolerance. In addition, the Cisco router can be set up to use the phone connection as a backup connection in the case of a catastrophic failure of the system software.

Router Administration
When it comes to administrating the Cisco routers, the main problem that I have always come into contact with is learning all of the commands for the regular and privleged EXEC modes on the router. In order to administrate the router, you can either terminal in via serial interfance, an ethernet port, or the modem line to connect to the IOS system for administration.

Once connected, you will have to enter a username and password to be able to access the regular mode. THis lower-access mode only allows access to basic feature probing and can be used to gather information about the router and the data on it. If an administrator wants to change something, they have to go into IOS and then enter exec mode which requres a second password. This added layer of security is meant to reduce unauthorized access and reduce security risks inherent in router settings changes.

The integrated IOS comes in several packages which depends on how deeply you want to have to administrate the router configuration. If you want to mmicromanage your router in order to squeeze optimized performance out of it, then one of the advanced builds of the IOS will be appropriate. If you are unfamiliar with routers or just want to be able to let the router work the defaults for the advanced port and IO settings, then you can get a more basic build of IOS integrated into the router.

Overall
No matter what version of IOS, what hardware options you choose, Cisco Systems will be there to offer training (albeit at a premium), support, and documentation for your router. Having the guarentee that a router is backed by a well known major company in combination with its proven reliability and its capacity for flexibility make the cisco 2500 series routers a top choice for network connectivity.