Cisco verses Linksys

[nr0c]

I was thinking about getting a Cisco soho 91 router presently have a Linksys Bersr41 router with no problems . Is there any difference in performance between the 2 ? Always heard about Cisco being the best so thought I would ask the experts. I have 4 computers here and have them networked together. Guess the thing was wondering about the most is the security differences between the 2 . Thanks for any reply Gary

[mbossman2]

Cisco and Linksys serve 2 very different markets/users.

The Linksys line is targeted at users whose network is a standalone network or, possibly, connects back to a small business network. As such, Linksys products do not have the same level of management hooks or controls that a Cisco product would have.

The Cisco line OTOH is targeted at users who WILL be connecting remotely back to a main corporate network. Good sized companies may dictate to their remote users that their corporate IT staff have access to and control over the router that they have to connect back to the corporate network (so they can change settings, update IOS, reset VPN encryption keys and the like). As such, Cisco builds in extensive management capabilities into even their "low end" products (which is the main reason that they have a much higher cost than lower end commerical and consumer level products).

If you are a buying a router for home use then I would go with the Linksys.

as to your security questions:

the Cisco Soho 91 offers both a stateful firewall and 3DES VPN encryption. the firewall on the SOHO series is based on the core of the Cisco firewall products and is quite robust and flexible but for a consumer level user many of the features really don't come into play.
HTH

[nr0c]

So do you think there is a difference in performance between the two for the casual user. Gary

[bailey]

as far as performance for the home network, you will see no differance, heck even in a large network I don't think you will see much differance eather.
all a router does is send the ip address of the packet to the computer by the ip address.

[mbossman2]

the only real place you will see a performance difference is when you approach the edge of the performance envelope and with these products that will occur only when you are running the maximum amount of VPN sessions with aq lot of encrypted traffic.

Both products are capable of routing 10mbps (or more) of cleartext traffic, but when you add in (or switch over to) IPSec 3DES encrypted traffic, the overall throughput drops. If memory serves correctly, the 91 series is software encrypted 3DES VPN and its maximum encrypted throughput is in the 2-3mbps range (max), the Linksys product, I am pretty sure, is less than that. So if you lay into both of these routers with encrypted traffic, the Cisco will have a better overall throughput as the traffic increases.

Now, does that matter to the average user? probably not, unless you are popping a enough encrypted traffic to (1) saturate your uplink and (2) your uplink speed is in the 2-3mbps range.