Cisco 2000 Series Connected Grid Routers brief review
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
The Cisco 2000 Series Connected Grid Routers are deployed at sites that do not have good air ventilations and thus harsh environmental conditions on a hot day. Normal routers would not survive in those extremely hot environments. It provides us the connection from those sites to our data center where critical services sit. In terms of the scope, there were roughly a hundred of them in our network.
Pros
- Works in an environment where no air con in place
- Provide the mpls functionality
- Modularized design that allow us to put in cards as we need
Cons
- Provide more SFP ports.
- On the ethernet switch card module, it is difficult to pull out the SFP once put in, as there is some sort of bracket around it, you really need some little fingers to do the job.
- The switch card has the interface lights on the side of the panel, rather than next to the port, would be great to bring the lights closer to the ports.
Return on Investment
- It is quite an expensive unit that does not provide huge throughput
- But at least it provides some kind of connection from the site back to the DC that allow the business to perform but not at the greatest potential
Alternatives Considered
Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms
Other Software Used
Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches, Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches, Cisco Catalyst 8000 Edge Platforms