Customer Reviews

Cisco CISCO861-K9 861 Ethernet Security Router

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The IOS version this router shipped with has a pretty annoying bug that made me waste 3 days to isolate and figure out. The bug is that once you setup your VLAN, DHCP, WAN and NAT, the router connected to my ISP and obtained an IP address from my ISP BUT, after saving the config as the startup-config and power-cycling, there is an issue with the NVI0 interface which manages NAT that prevents the NVI0 interface from starting-up, thus never obtaining an IP from my ISP.

Upgrading to the latest IOS version fixed that problem.. but you have to pay for a service contract to get access to IOS updates which run $200+/year.

All said and done, it's a great router and offers a decent feature set to get good experience with cisco routers and the IOS.

If it had not been for this issue, I'd give this router 5 starts.

This router does come with CCP (graphical configuration manager) but, be warned, it SUCKS. I find the CLI easier to use than the GUI but, that may be because I'm a software engineer.

Be warned, if you buy this router, you will need to upgrade the IOS to get it working in a dynamic IP setting.

This is a great product by Cisco. The price is extremely good for the power and functions you get. This router has 256MB RAM w/128MB Flash so it can handle the 15.x IOS versions with absolutely no issues at all. My old 877 would run @ 60-80 percent CPU utilization on a 20MB Cable modem connection constant w/a Cisco SG-300-10 L3 LAN. Had the 881 but returned it because I didn't want integrated wireless for I purchased a Cisco WAP4410N. The Cisco CP software sets up a nice stateful firewall. I've noticed greater response on my WAN connection due to the beefy CPU and RAM configuration. Make sure you purchase a Smartnet contract from CDW for around $15.00 a year so you can take advantage of full replacement warranties and IOS upgrade from Cisco. The only downfall to this router is you can only have 2 VLAN's vs. the 4 I use to have with the 877, but some redesign of my Wireless Vlan and Vonage Vlan took care of that. I still have my hardwired local Vlan, so I wasn't too disappointed for the performance boost made up for the lack of VLAN's.

This is a very good router for a remote VPN endpoint. I set it up within a couple of hours and it was up and running an IPSEC tunnel back to headquarters as a backup solution to our primary MPLS circuit. No issues at all so far. You have to be familiar with Cisco IOS and basic Cisco commands to set this router up.