What routers do big companies use?

[latrosicarius]

Do big companies even use routers, since they typically have separate "hardware firewalls"?

If not, what acts as a Gateway, assigning local IPs to the LAN clients, and getting assigned a WAN IP by the ISP?

If so, are they different from normal home routers? And what are the benefits of using a business-type router over a home router? Lastly, what are some good brands for these routers?

Thanks

[Moby-Dick]

Most of our edge equipment is Cisco

very little stuff on our network has any direct web access - it would be via a proxy usually.

DHCP is assigned by the loacl domain controller for that site.

Our branches use Cisco DSL routers( 847's IIRC ). For small business stuff you could use one of them or something powerfull but with a neater interface like a vigor draytek.

[explicitlyrics]

Cisco wins hands down in almost all IP communications at the moment....

[Stoo]

Cisco, 3Com & HP are the main ones I've seen, usually managed switches and a smattering of routers.

Firewalls are a bit of an oddity, you can either go with hardware like sonicwall, watchguard's firebox, or a software solution on a dedicated multi-homed server, like checkpoint.

The main advantage of business class routers is that they tend to have much more powerful hardware, and more robust firmware, and are designed to run multiple machines off them with heavy loads, without falling over..

The powerful hardware comes into play with things like p2p where large numbers of connections need to be managed over a long period of time - a business class router will sit there and deal with it, but many home routers will freeze up on you, either from overheating, or software issues relating to the load.

[UltraMagnus]

usually cisco or somtimes IBM IIRC.

although, some buisnesses are using linux computers as routers, and there are even rumours that M$ use BSD computers for routers........

[latrosicarius]

Thanks guys, that's interesting stuff. I doubt I'm going to get one, but still cool to know

there are even rumours that M$ use BSD computers for routers........

Hah! Keeping costs down, I guess. Licenses for Windows Server cost too much for internal use?

[eddietop]

We use 3 Cisco 6509's here. I think they costed us more then £50,000 each to buy new.

[joshwa]

Cisco routers, cisco switches, cisco firewalls etc

[explicitlyrics]

eddietop, who do you work for out of interest?

[kempez]

Cisco, 3com as well as Nortel equiptment

[b0redom]

Yah, when I was at Yahoo, it was all Cisco kit too. It's pretty much prohibitivly expensive for the home user though....

Tom

[pands@scan]

cisco here too tbh!

[Stoo]

Yah, when I was at Yahoo, it was all Cisco kit too. It's pretty much prohibitivly expensive for the home user though....

It's not too bad - I bought a Cisco 857W for just over £200

[UltraMagnus]

"last gen" cisco stuff can be had on ebay pritty cheap since this WEEE thing came in...

although, i have heard it isnt the easiest thing to configure and may require a serial terminal....

[latrosicarius]

We use 3 Cisco 6509's here. I think they costed us more then £50,000 each to buy new.

WOW! But isn't that like a whole rack of routers? Or is it one single router?

[young_one]

Cisco, Nortel and OEM managed stuff (IBM, HP and Dell) are the ones I hear about most.

Heard the rumor about Microsoft using *bsd as routers a while ago. It was pretty well known some of their frontend stuff, even hotmail upto a few years ago, used to run on a linux (or maybe unix, my memory is blurry thanks to alcohol) platform.