CISCO2801-HSEC/K9 Router

CISCO2801-HSEC/K9 Router is an enterprise Cisco router, from the ISR G1 family: 2801 Bundle w/AIM-VPN/SSL-2,Adv. IP Serv,10 SSL lic,64F/256D.

It carries VPN and SSL capability. The question worth asking is whether those features are licensed as well as present, because on most routers security is a separate entitlement from the hardware, and enabling it also costs throughput the headline figure does not account for.

The configuration is recorded as 64 MB flash and 256 MB DRAM. On older routers that is frequently the binding constraint on a software upgrade rather than the processor, and flash in particular needs room for two images if you want a safe fallback.

What this platform is for. The ISR G1 is a branch-office router from Cisco’s first Integrated Services generation, built to put routing, voice, security and switching in one box at a remote site instead of four separate devices. Knowing the family’s intended role is usually more useful than the part number when you are working out whether something fits: a chassis built for one job will do another, but rarely well, and the cost of that mismatch tends to show up as throughput or feature limits rather than as an outright failure.

Three questions worth answering before any router purchase, whatever the model. What the throughput requirement actually is with your feature set enabled, rather than the datasheet figure measured without it. Whether the features you need are licensed as well as present, since on most platforms security and performance are separate entitlements. And how many slots or ports you will need in three years, because adding capacity is cheap and replacing a chassis is not.

Where this sits: this is the first-generation ISR, two generations behind what Cisco sells now. The 1800, 2800 and 3800 series were replaced by the ISR G2, which has itself since been replaced by the ISR 4000. Equipment of this age is bought to keep something working, not to build anything new, and that is a perfectly reasonable thing to want.

The honest caution is not the age but the exposure. A router this old runs software that stopped receiving security fixes a long time ago, so where one is doing anything internet-facing it is worth asking whether it should be. Tell us what it is doing and we will tell you whether a current equivalent is cheaper than you expect.

Tell us what the router has to do, the circuits it has to terminate, the throughput you are designing to and whether you need the security features licensed. We would rather size it from the requirement than from a part number, because the two commonest mistakes on a router purchase are buying throughput that turns out to need a licence and buying a chassis with no slots left.

Green Code Technologies is a supplier of Cisco, and we supply Huawei and Juniper networking alongside HPE, Dell, Samsung, Netgear, Ubiquiti and Asus. We would rather tell you a part is no longer supported, or that we need to check it, than take an order for something that will not do what you need.