Upgrading a complicated home network

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Macallan

Reputable
Oct 21, 2014
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I have a complicated home network that the previous homeowners installed...I believe one of them was a senior guy at Avaya. Currently, I have an outdated Cisco 800 series router, connected to an outdated 3COM unmanaged gigabit 16 port switch, feeding many wired connections throughout the house, and 5 Cisco Aironet 1200 wireless access points all with PoE. I've got mostly cat 5e running throughout the house, except a few newer runs that are Cat6. While not a professional, I have a strong computer background and want to tackle this myself. The Cisco router connects to the Verizon Fios router, which has its wifi disabled.

I'm upgrading the wifi access points to newer aironet access points, which requires adding a wireless access controller. The question is whether to upgrade the Cisco router, or just remove it from the system and plug the gigabit switch into the Verizon FIos router.

There are obvious pros and cons to both approaches. One is cheaper. Any thoughts from the professionals?
 
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Likely the cisco router was being used for its advanced features. Software wise it is a full function IOS based router.

You first step is to determine what if any feature you might need a router to do other than provide access to the internet. If all you are going to do is surf with it the FIOS router should be fine. Most features on a commerical router do not do you a lot of good in a home. If you for example needed to run multiple VPN to locations and select the path based on a routing protocol you would have a difficult time accomplishing that with anything but a commercial router.

Now I use cisco commercial routers in my house because I can configure them in my sleep. Mostly its I am too lazy most the time to bother...
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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Likely the cisco router was being used for its advanced features. Software wise it is a full function IOS based router.

You first step is to determine what if any feature you might need a router to do other than provide access to the internet. If all you are going to do is surf with it the FIOS router should be fine. Most features on a commerical router do not do you a lot of good in a home. If you for example needed to run multiple VPN to locations and select the path based on a routing protocol you would have a difficult time accomplishing that with anything but a commercial router.

Now I use cisco commercial routers in my house because I can configure them in my sleep. Mostly its I am too lazy most the time to bother learning which stupid screen I have to find a check box on in a consumer router. I prefer to just type in a command and it is trivial to get samples of even the most advanced configurations.

Pretty much if you don't know why you need the cisco router you likely can remove it. That is a older router likely used before you could get 100m internet connections. That router will have a issue keeping up.
 
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