Access Routing Adoption Decision Criteria
Like their switching counterparts, routers that are employed in small-medium businesses should deliver high performance, flexibility, and intelligent business-class services such as the following:
Availability in the form of various types of redundancy and survivability for network resilience.
Security such as VPN support, intrusion detection, integrated firewall, and access control lists (ACLs). Chapter 5 provides more details.
QoS for traffic scheduling, queuing, and policing.
Hot-swappable modules for easy maintenance and uninterrupted network uptime.
Scalable manageability for all sizes of businesses.
Consumer-class routers, although they offer attractive commodity prices, might fail when exposed to the rigors of a growing business's applications. This could bring a business to its knees. Such products also could lead to higher TCO over time and result in a patchwork of networking devices that are difficult to manage. The right router can establish a solid foundation for business networking and growth.