Enterprise router solution

liamlevi · Jul 13, 2015

Hello community,

I work for a start up company in California (nothing too fancy), and recently we've been encountering many connectivity issues.
As an online company you can only imagine the horror show once the internet is out..
If any of you know them, we currently have MonkeyBrains ISP and a cradlepoint mbr1400 router, both of which are being replaced.

I was assigned to choose the new router and researching the topic I've found my knowledge is rather lacking..

The office currently holds about 40 people but it is growing quite fast so the goal is to buy a router that could support ~100 users.
Gigabyte Ethernet and networking switching compatibility are needed.
Price is not a big issues but preferably around the $1000, although very negotiable.

I was contemplating earlier between the Cisco 2900 series and Juniper J series.

Any suggestions/recommendations/tips will be very appreciated!

Hope you guys have a good day,
Liam

bill001g · Jul 13, 2015

You almost can't compare that cradlepoint router to the cisco or juniper. It main purpose is to provide either primary or backup 4g connectivity.

You will likely need to use AP to provide your wireless since it is not a common function to run wireless directly in your internet router. You also want to run switches in front of either of these devices.

Still at this point you have eliminated a lot of the hard work. The only purpose this router will serve is to do the NAT function to the internet. You should have moved even the DHCP function to one of your file server...most people use their microsoft AD server.

Both are likely overkill since they are actual routers that support routing protocols. If you are looking at juniper I would look at srx240 they are a much better comparison to the 3900 line of cisco routers. I tend to like cisco better just because I am more familiar with them but juniper routers are also very stable routers.

Still most the extra cost in either of these platforms are for the slots you are not going to use. If you were getting you internet delivered on say multiple T1 and bonding them then you need a real router. You might be able to get by with a higher end consumer router.

gbb0330 · Jul 13, 2015

liamlevi :

As far as I can tell there is no reason to buy an enterprise grade router, any 100 dollar, consumer grade router can handle 100 users and gigabit Ethernet.

I would recommend a simple firewall like Dell sonicwall. It has a built in router, and many other features that you may find useful, like content filtering, site to site VPN.

jsmithepa · Jul 13, 2015

If you are asking this in a, well shall I say DIY forum, maybe you want to contract this out to a vendor. Networking wise, it only starts to get complicated when you have to have different domains, you want to keep your clients separate, nobody can get into payroll etc, but that's Microsoft networking if that's your OS.

Otherwise connectivity wise, it's relatively simple, you can stack several 48 ports switches no problem, and you resolve the bottleneck(s) perhaps by keeping all sales traffics on their own subnet etc.

These days if you are running anything, I can't imagine not having a back up Internet. Ideally you will have 2 separate physical feeds from different vendors, but have 1 vendor manage your front end routers so they can take advantage of the aggregated bandwidth but can automatically switch to one feed when the other one fails.

liamlevi · Jul 16, 2015

As far as high end consumer grade routers for a ~100 users company, do you have any recommendations for a specific one? firewall options not being a major point at the moment.

gbb0330 · Jul 16, 2015

liamlevi :

if all you want is to provide internet access something like this will do just fine
D-link DGL-5500

If I were you (with 1000 budget) I would go for a sonicwall TZ300 or 400, the requirements will escalate quickly and having a device that has more advanced, business level networking features will be useful.

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