Slashdot Mirror
Low Cost Routers with 100Mbps WAN Ports?
Ed asks: "I am getting ready to move into a dorm at Kent State, and they have a 100Mbps port in the room. They allow routers, and switches to connect more than 1 PC, however every router I see at the consumer level has a 10Mbps WAN port. I would really prefer not to waste having a 100BaseTX port on a 10Mbps router. Does anyone make a semi-low cost router with a 100Mbps WAN port?"
If you can demonstrate that your bandwidth to the Internet is greater than about 800 KB/s, I will personally give you a cookie.
Don't waste your money on an expensive router with a 100 Mbps uplink port unless you can take advantage of it somehow.
Build it yourself out of an old box you (or a friend) have lying around. Buy two $10 10/100 cards and a cheap 10/100 switch. Besides, it's more fun that way and you might learn something.
I would recommend getting a cisco catalyst 6513 switch with the following configuration:
1 cat 6513 w/redundant ps
2 supervisor2/msfc2 cards
2 switch fabric module-2 cards
4 16 port fabric enabled gig-e cards
1 network analysis module
1 ids blade
3 48 port 10/100 power over ethernet enabled blades
if you can get two ports to the campus backbone i'd recommend using both of the ports and getting the campus IT folks to provision them off of separate switches and configure hsrp for you, then you could get another 6513 configured similarly to the one above and have a good sense of redundancy. One 6513 configured as the one above is should run you >$100k. If this doesn't fall in the 'cheap' catagory you could look at getting a cisco 3550-12T switch. this guy has 12 10/100/1000 ports and comes with basic ip routing functionality. its only $10k or so i think. If that is still too expensive you could look at something like a 2621 router, which has 2 100mbps ports. With the 2621 or the 6513 solution you could also add voice modules. You could have your local teleco provision a few PRIs to your dorm and become the campus CLEC or something. If you teamed up with other students at other colleges you could put voice gateways at a bunch of colleges and use the fat pipes between them to do toll bypass and give students across the world cheap long distance. If you went with the 6500 you'd also have a permanent space heater in your dorm. If you need an even cheaper solution i'd recommend using a linux box or something of that nature, not only will it be a fun learning experience, but it will be dirt cheap. oh, and i'll give you a cookie if you try to order the 6513 with WS-X6369-THC(that's the integrated bong option....ooh...you'll want the WS-X6569-THC, that's the fabric enabled bong option).