Cisco 2811, Hot List in Cisco 2800 Series Integrated Services Routers. Cisco 2800 Series, for Small to Large Offices

The used Cisco 2800 Series routers, ideal for small to medium-sized businesses and enterprise branch offices, offer secure, wire-speed delivery of concurrent data, voice, and video services; offer features such as hardware-based VPN encryption acceleration, intrusion-protection and firewall functions, and optional integrated call processing and voice mail; offera wide variety of network modules and interfaces, voice digital signal processor (DSP) slots, high-density interfaces for a wide range of connectivity requirements, and sufficient performance and slot density for future network expansion requirements and advanced applications.

The Cisco 2800 Series comprises four platforms:Cisco 2801,Cisco 2811,Cisco 2821, and Cisco 2851.Cisco 2801and Cisco 2811are one rack unit in height and have two 10/100 LAN ports. The more powerful Cisco 2821 routers and Cisco 2851 routers are two rack units in height and have two 10/100/1000 LAN ports.

The higher-end router platforms of the Cisco 2800 series offer increased performance, increased slot density including network module slots ad extension voice module slots and increased inline power output.

Better serve for small to large business, Cisco 2800 series owns several hot models among Cisco users, such as Cisco 2811, Cisco2821, and Cisco2851, especially Cisco 2811 routers, very popular by google search. So let’s check some details of Cisco 2811 router:

The Cisco 2811 Integrated Services Router provides the following support:

•Wire-speed performance for concurrent services such as security and voice , and advanced services to multiple T1/E1/xDSL WAN rates

•Enhanced investment protection through increased performance and modularity

•Increased density through High-Speed WAN Interface Card Slots (four)

•Enhanced Network Module Slot

•Support for over 90 existing and new modules

•Support for majority of existing AIMs, NMs, WICs, VWICs, and VICs

•Two Integrated 10/100 Fast Ethernet ports

•Optional Layer 2 switching support with Power over Ethernet (PoE) (as an option)

•Security

◦On-board encryption

◦Support of up to 1500 VPN tunnels with the AIM-EPII-PLUS Module

◦Antivirus defense support through Network Admission Control (NAC)

◦Intrusion Prevention as well as stateful Cisco IOS Firewall support and many more essential security features

•Voice

◦Analog and digital voice call support

◦Optional voice mail support

◦Optional support for Cisco CallManager Express (Cisco CME) for local call processing in stand alone business for up to36 IP Phones

◦Optional support for Survivable Remote Site Telephony support for local call processing in small enterprise branch offices for up to 36 IP phones

Cisco 2811’s price info at RouterSwitch.com:

Conditions: New Sealed

List price:  US$2,495.00

Wholesale Price: US$1,048.00

You Save:  US$1,447.00 (58.00% OFF)

Cisco Demos WLAN Controller for Branch Offices at Interop

Cisco Systems officials over the past few months have built out the capabilities of their Borderless Networks initiative in such areas as mobility, security and management. Now the networking giant is looking to extend the reach of the strategy into branch offices.

At Interop 2011 this week in Las Vegas, cisco router officials are showing off their new Flex 7500 Series Cloud Controller and new Integrated Services Router Web Security products for the ISR G2 branch router. The products are part of Cisco’s efforts to meet the demand from businesses that are looking to bring such key capabilities as management and security out of the branch offices and back into main headquarters, according to Prashanth Shenoy, senior manager of Borderless Networks marketing.

“Since data centers began consolidating about a decade ago, a lot of things have been moved out of the branch offices and into the central data center,” Shenoy said in an interview with eWEEK, adding that IT departments are being asked to grow the level of services they offer while seeing their staffing being reduced.

Despite that consolidation, businesses still need to offer the same level of service and user experience to their employees in the branch offices, he said. With the new products announced May 10, businesses will be able to consolidate more of their IT infrastructure in the central data center—a move that will help drive down capital and operational costs—without hurting the operations of the branch offices, and deliver their services through the increasingly popular cloud computing model.

The Flex 7500 Series Cloud Controller is housed in the data center, letting IT administrators remotely manage up to 500 branch offices from a central location. They can remotely wireless policies, manage the branch offices and offer security settings without the time and expense of having to physically go to the offices, Sylvia Hooks, senior manager of mobility marketing at cisco871 , said in an interview.

The new WLAN (wireless LAN) controller can control up to 2,000 WiFI access points—twice the number currently supported—and more than 20,000 clients from the data center, Hooks said. A goal was to “allow the branch office to be independent” while still getting the technology capabilities they need to do their jobs, she said.

 The controller is available immediately, starting at $47,955.

In addition, Cisco in July will start shipping the ISR Web Security software, which extends the company’s ScanSafe Cloud Web Security to branch offices by putting centralized Web protection and malware detection onto the ISR G2 branch router.

According to  cisco 871 officials, the new software will not require businesses to buy more hardware. Instead, the software is in the router, enabling branch offices to use local Internet access capabilities, which will save users time, money and resource that otherwise would go toward hardware deployments.

The software can be delivered via the cloud, while the management is done centrally, they said.

Cisco is aggressively building out its Borderless Networks efforts, which revolve around the idea of getting access to a company’s network anytime, from anywhere and through any device.

Cisco on networking

Cisco on Wednesday took to the Web to defend against an increasingly prevalent criticism: that its end-to-end network architecture approach -- and the prices Cisco 2800 commands for ubiquitous networking products like switches -- is costing customers more than they need to be paying.

It's quite the opposite, argued Cisco: while commodity networking products might seem cheaper on an acquisition cost by acquisition cost basis, its single-vendor network vision is in fact what will preserve companies for the long haul by future-proofing their networks and offering better total cost of ownership (TCO).

In other words, infrastructure that's merely "good enough," Cisco says, won't be able to handle the demands of security, mobility, robustness, video and ROI placed on the networks of the future.

"There's a debate raging about whether the network really matters," said Rob Lloyd, Cisco's executive vice president, worldwide operations, during Cisco's Wednesday Webcast. "One one side, we have many new vendors to the networking industry who believe the value of the network should be determined by the cost of its components and that customers should focus on acquisition costs."

The Webcast -- served up in concert with a viral video and declarative white paper from Cisco -- is a thinly veiled counterattack by Cisco 2801 aimed at rival HP and other competitors looking to paint the networking titan as unnecessarily expensive and exclusive.

Criticism of Cisco's approach has also stepped up in the industry as it's experienced declines in its core networking technology businesses and taken lumps from a number of recent public relations headaches, from an ongoing executive exodus to its restructured consumer unit.

HP has emerged as Cisco's most frequent public haranguer. But Cisco's single-vendor networking approach has been challenged by researchers like Gartner, which took Cisco to task in a Nov. 2010 report that declared that multivendor networks are more cost-effective for businesses overall.

Opting for Cisco's architectural vision instead of "commodity competitors" was the key message from Lloyd to partners at this year's Cisco Partner Summit. In the Webcast, Lloyd and Cisco executives and partners sought to portray Cisco as the network innovator -- whose ideas are the building blocks for enabling next-generation technologies like cloud computing -- rather than something assembled with commodity sales.

"The real cost," Lloyd argued Wednesday, "is in project deployment and ongoing support," not equipment sales.

Multivendor networks are one way to do it, added Mike Rau, vice president and chief technology officer for Cisco Borderless Networks, but looking at network costs that way distracts from a broader view of total cost of ownership. He cited the "large amount of test and integration work we do" at Cisco to make various technologies, from switches to security, work seamlessly.

Another way to look at it, Cisco said, is whereas a "good enough network" might allow for things like single purpose networking, bolt-on security and basic quality of service, the ideas that those things are "enough" to future-proof businesses are myths. In contrast, executives argued, Cisco architecture provides innovations like integrated security, application intelligence with optimization, a unified computing platform, and better long-term ROI and investment protection because of those things.

Rau insisted that customers need mission-critical security and application support built into networking products instead of cumbersomely managed in a multi-vendor environment. He also railed against the idea that basic warranty is sufficient for network protection -- that's "one of the biggest myths out there," he said.

"You get what you pay for," argued Rau.

One place where the heated Cisco debate is playing out dramatically is in the channel, where partners are asked to build behind Cisco's end-to-end vision and convert their Cisco sales from technology-led to architecture-inspired.

Bob Cagnazzi, president and CEO of BlueWater Communications Group, a New York-based Cisco 2900 Gold partner, joined Lloyd and Rau during the Webcast and declared his support for Cisco's vision of networking sales.

"I think it's simple when you start to [see] all the elements that can impact the network," Cagnazzi said during the webcast. "It's more than just acquisition cost. You don't have to go out very far long-term to see the benefits."

Cisco opens new green data center

Cisco has opened a new “green” data center in Allen, Texas, offering a broad range of computing and cloud storage capabilities packaged in an environmentally friendly facility complete with ecologically responsible solutions to aspects like power consumption and cooling.

The new facility is part of Cisco’s ongoing push to offer IT as a service via its own hosting facilities. The Allen data center is “paired” with another based in Richardson to form what the company calls a metro virtual data center or MVDC—a virtualized IT cloud that also does the double duty of backing each other up and offer more resiliency for services offered out of each center. The MVDC setup—which Cisco plans to replicate in two more locations—will form the core foundation for Cisco’s private cloud, known as Cisco IT Elastic Infrastructure Services.

For IT pros, redundant and highly available facilities like this new configuration from  used Cisco means more reliable access to cloud-based applications like hosting, storage, video, mobility, security and collaboration—along with the potential cost savings that comes with eliminating on-premises IT hardware and necessary real estate. Plus, IT pros can have the added feel-good and carbon reduction value of helping protect environmental resources thanks to Cisco’s green build approach. Cleantech research from Pike Research forecasts that cloud computing will reduce global energy usage 38 percent by 2020.

On the green front, Cisco’s new facility features a number of green design and operational elements. The facility is cooled by a system that uses outside fresh air, which Cisco estimates can be used 65 percent of the time and save $600,000 per year in cooling costs. A lagoon captures rainwater to irrigate landscaping around the building, and solar cells on the room generate 100 kilowatts of power for the office space in the data center.

In a blog post, buy Cisco IT architect Douglas Alger discusses additional aspects of the new data center design and how it is designed to help both Cisco and the customers that use it save money (and, the company hopes, the planet):

The Data Center’s cabinets have exhaust chimneys that allow hot air generated by hardware to flow into a plenum space and avoid mixing with incoming chilled air.  This helps the cooling system operate more efficiently.  (We used a similar design in our Richardson Data Center, too.) [And] If anything in a Data Center’s standby infrastructure is going to fail it’s the batteries, so I’m happy to dispense with a static UPS at this site. The rotary UPS contains a large, spinning flywheel and in the event of a utility power failure that kinetic energy will supply several seconds of ride-through power, long enough to transfer the Data Center’s electrical load to standby generators.