Business-Class Features for Small Offices and Teleworkers through the Power of Cisco IOS Technology
The Cisco 828 G.SHDSL Router provides business-class functionality for small offices and teleworkers through the power of Cisco IOS technology. It enables service providers and resellers to increase service revenue by supporting features for business-class security, differentiated classes of service, and managed network services with Cisco IOS Software. These value-added features, along with the manageability and proven reliability of Cisco IOS technology, provide the mission-critical networking that businesses require.
The newest member of the award-winning Cisco 800 Series Routers, the Cisco 828 G.SHDSL Router, provides small offices and teleworkers the features they need for mission-critical applications. It also gives service providers a platform that allows them to offer high-margin, value-added business services while helping them reduce the cost of deployment and services.
G.SHDSL is the latest version of DSL technology, and it provides businesses a symmetrical service for bandwidth-intensive applications. G.SHDSL can support speeds both upstream and downstream of up to 2.3 Mbps and can reach customers as far as 20,000 feet from the telco/PTT office. G.SHDSL is a standards-based technology, and the Cisco 828 Router supports the ITU G.991.2 standard.
The Cisco Systems portfolio of G.SHDSL customer premises equipment (CPE), all based on Cisco IOS Software, serves all business-customer segments from small offices and teleworkers to branch offices. With the Cisco G.SHDSL CPE, service providers can deploy value-added services to an expanded customer base of users who require advanced, business-class features. Additionally, Cisco and its DSL CPE can help service providers reduce their operational expenses.
BUSINESS CLASS FEATURES FOR VALUE-ADDED SERVICES
The Cisco 828 Router is ideal for users in a small office or for teleworkers, supporting scalable, secure, quality, and proven business solutions such as:
• Business-class security
• Differentiated classes of service
• Managed access with service level agreements (SLAs)
Business-Class Security
To take advantage of the unprecedented opportunities offered by communications and commerce over the Internet, private information must remain secure. With Cisco IOS Software, the Cisco 828 Router provides basic network security features such as standard and extended access control lists (ACLs), generic routing encapsulation (GRE) tunneling, and Network Address Translation (NAT), which hides private IP addresses behind a single public IP address.
With the always-on connection that DSL provides, it is essential to provide perimeter security with a firewall. Beyond simple packet filtering, the Cisco 828 Router provides a stateful inspection firewall with the Cisco IOS Firewall Feature Set. A stateful inspection or dynamic firewall provides a greater level of security intelligence by allowing or preventing network access based on a session's state. The firewall will allow traffic to pass when requested by a user behind the firewall but will prevent unauthorized network access.
Additionally, when using a public network such as the Internet to connect remote offices and teleworkers, additional security measures must be taken to make those connections secure for business communications. Virtual private networks (VPNs) use security encryption and tunneling technology to make connections over a public network secure. The Cisco 828 Router supports VPNs with the strongest form of encryption, 3DES IPSec, to allow businesses to save money by using low-cost connections to the Internet without sacrificing the security that private leased lines provide. Furthermore, firewall and VPN features enable service providers and resellers to offer revenue-generating value-added services beyond simple Internet access.
The Cisco 828 Router supports the Cisco Easy VPN Remote feature which allows Cisco 800 Series routers to act as remote VPN clients. As such, these devices can receive predefined security policies from the headquarters' head-end, thus minimizing the VPN configuration required at the remote location. This cost effective solution is ideal for remote offices with little IT support, or large CPE deployments where it is impractical to individually configure multiple remote devices. For those at remote offices, the Cisco Easy VPN Remote feature can be configured with the Cisco Router Web Set Up tool (CRWS) Web-based GUI. This makes VPN configuration as easy as entering a password, increasing productivity and lowering costs as the need for local IT support is minimized.
The Cisco 828 Router also supports the Cisco Easy VPN Server feature in Cisco IOS Release 12.2(8)T, or later releases. This allows a Cisco 800 Series router to act as a VPN head-end device in site-to-site VPNs where the remote office routers are using the Easy VPN Remote feature. Policies can then be pushed down to the remote office routers. In addition to terminating site-to-site VPNs, a Cisco 800 running Cisco Easy VPN Server can terminate VPN tunnels initiated by mobile remote workers running VPN client software on PCs. This flexibility makes it possible for mobile and remote workers, such as sales people on the road, to access their headquarters' intranet where critical data and applications exist.
DIFFERENTIATED CLASSES OF SERVICE
The Cisco 828 Router enables service providers to increase revenue by building differentiated service options based on premium, standard, or best-effort service classes.
It employs quality-of-service (QoS) features such as application-aware networking with IP QoS features and traffic management with ATM QoS features. This enables the router to expedite the handling of mission-critical or delay-sensitive applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) or videoconferencing, while sharing network resources with lower-priority applications such as Web surfing.
By providing QoS features at the edge of the network, applications such as video or IP telephony can more efficiently use network bandwidth, and users of mission-critical applications in remote locations can gain the benefits of traffic management.