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Selecting Cisco Products

The Cisco 800 series router has mostly replaced the Cisco 700 series

because the 700 series doesn't run the Cisco IOS. In fact, I personally hope
Cisco will soon stop selling the 700 series routers altogether because they're
difficult to configure and maintain.

The main things for you to consider when choosing Cisco routers are

highlighted here:

Scale of routing features needed

Port density and variety requirements

Capacity and performance

Common user interface

Cisco Switches

It seems like switch prices are dropping almost daily. I recently received an
e-mail from Cisco announcing that the Catalyst 2900 series switches have
dropped in price 30 percent. About four years ago, a 12-port, 10/100 switch
card for the Catalyst 5000 series switch was about $15,000. Now you can buy
a complete Catalyst 5000 with a 10/100 card and supervisor module for about
$7500 or thereabouts. My point is, with switch prices becoming reasonable, it's
now much easier to justify installing switches in your network. Why buy hubs
when you can use switches? I think every closet should have at least one switch.

And never failing us, Cisco again has a huge assortment of switches to

meet absolutely every business need you can dream of. But as when buying
a router, you must consider whether you need 10/100 or 1000Mbps for each
desktop, and if you need to connect between switches. ATM (asynchronous
transfer mode) is another factor, but, with Gigabit Ethernet out, and 10Gbps
links just around the corner, who needs ATM? The next criterion to consider
is again port density. Lower-end models start at 12 ports, and the higher-end
jobs can provide hundreds of switched ports per switch. That's quite a range!
Figure 1.22 shows the Cisco-switch product line.

And here's that list of switch-buying considerations:

Business requirements for 10, 100, or even 1000Mbps

Need for trunking and interswitch links

Workgroup segmentation (VLANs)

Port density needs

Different user interfaces

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