Cisco 1750: A small office

Fulfilling our promise from last month's Innovations, we wasted no time in getting Cisco's new branch office router/gateway, the 1750, into our East Coast labs for a round of hands-on evaluation. Here's how it performed.

For purposes of testing, Cisco sent us both the 175o and 2610 routers. The 2600 series were Cisco's first voice-capable routers for the small-to-medium sized branch office, and have the same basic functionality as the 175o. The 26oo's ability to act as a VoIP gateway as well as a data router distinguished it from the 2500, which can be considered the archetypal Cisco router - used in enterprises for the past six years and familiar to most IT managers.

The 261o looks a lot like the Cisco router you're probably used to seeing - a wide, flat gray box with a couple of LEDs. The 1750, on the other hand, is more compact and slightly chubbier. Both routers shipped to us with the same voice and data cards installed: a one-port serial card for data, and two-port foreign exchange office (FXO) and foreign exchange station (FXS) cards for voice, This configuration filled the three available slots on the 1750, while the 2610's second WAN interface slot was left empty. We were also sent Ti CSU/DSU cards for each router, which can be swapped out for serial cards if a CSU/DSU is already in place. Cisco also offers ISDN BRI cards for WAN connections, as well as two-port async/sync serial, 56/64 Kbps four-wire CSU/DSU, and twoand four-wire E&M voice interfaces. One slot on the 1750 is reserved for voice, but the rest are universal, so interface configuration is quite flexible.

On the back of the 1750 you'll also find an RJ-45 port for connecting a...