Cisco 2000 Series Connected Grid Routers (CGR 2000)

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.

The Cisco 2000 Series Connected Grid Routers (CGR 2000) is well suited in an enclosed environment where there is no air con in place, and it may get quite hot. It provides copper and fiber connections to the next site so if you have a fiber in place, it suits as well. As it's not designed for speed, so if you are after high speed links, such as 10G and above, it is not the choice.

Our organization is using the Cisco 2000 Series Connected Grid Routers [CGR 2000] across our various outside facilities around our City. We have many outdoor locations that needed a good rugged option for connecting environments of this type. They are built to withstand the heat and various elements that they are exposed to. It addresses the problem of having to have a sealed closet for our networking equipment.

These may not be the fastest or latest [technology] when it comes to routers, but for their class, they are great. If you were you put a similarly priced router out in the places these things can run it would be dead within a year. Also, you don't need to have an elaborate networking closet to get these into. They work well in small, hot, or potentially dusty places with ease.

We use the Cisco 2000 Series [Connected Grid Routers (CGR 2000)] as a hardened switch that controls our solar field array and is needed in an outdoor type environment. With our harsh climate, we needed a rugged device that would not need special heating or cooling out in the environment. The router has worked flawlessly since we have installed and is managed by the network engineer like any other router. The router keeps our solar field producing power and monitoring for issues.

The best scenarios for the Cisco 2000 Series Connected Grid Routers (CGR 2000) is for outdoor exposures with little supporting infrastructure. I also recommend multiple fiber or copper connections, since the network may have issues in the environment.