Cisco 1720 or Cisco 857 for learning?

DJMK4 · 29 Apr 2010 at 10:43

Hi there,

I currently have the choice between 2 routers which I can use for testing purposes. These are the Cisco 857 or the Cisco 1720.

The Cisco 1720 currently has no ADSL WIC cards in the back, which would be useless for me anyway as my connection at home uses ADSL2+ technology (on BE).

I also have the option of a Cisco 857 which does support ADSL2+ pending firmware version which I will be checking soon.

Which one would be best to keep for learning purposes?

Any help appriciated from the Cisco guru's

Thanks all

paradigm · 29 Apr 2010 at 11:16

It depends on what you mean by learning? If it's simply to have a mess around with, then either, and simply don't use it as your WAN interface.

If you are studying toward your CCNA then get both, and a couple of switches (either 2900 or 3500/3550, all are plentyful and cheap).

It's amazing how quickly your collection ends up growing, I myself have more kit now than I know what to do with

DJMK4 · 29 Apr 2010 at 12:02

Well I wanted to play around with configuring the basics of configuring the router and getting use to the IOS, commands, configuring interfaces and features on the router. I would like to try and get the WAN interface up which means hooking it up to my connection at home (ADSL 2+) which is why I thought the 857 would have come in handy over the 1700 as I dont want to pay for an ADSL2+ HWIC card.

Asides from that, other features I want to look at is VLAN (the 857 has one configurable VLAN which would be perfect for me at home), VPN, QoS.

When I start getting deeper into the learning process for my CCNA then I will look in to aqquring a second router.

At the moment its aiming towards the 857 aslong as I can get the WAN interface up on my connection at home for testing.

paradigm · 29 Apr 2010 at 12:06

If you are set on using it for (and getting the most out of) your connection, I'd be looking for an 877m.

DJMK4 · 29 Apr 2010 at 12:16

It wont be used full time on my connection at home, maybe one day I will use a Cisco full time, that will probably be what my next Cisco router purchase will be, something that will perform well on my connection, for the moment its just about learning/testing so just need to know if the 857 will do atleast this.

I will keep the 877m in mind as a possible second router

Thanks

bigredshark · 29 Apr 2010 at 12:17

I'd strongly advise against using it for your internet connection, it'll limit how much you're prepared to mess around with it and when you do you risk having no internet access with which to look up solutions.

I have plenty of lab kit but the Juniper which runs my DSL never gets touched config wise...

DJMK4 · 29 Apr 2010 at 12:18

bigredshark said:
I'd strongly advise against using it for your internet connection, it'll limit how much you're prepared to mess around with it and when you do you risk having no internet access with which to look up solutions.

I have plenty of lab kit but the Juniper which runs my DSL never gets touched config wise...

Its not going to be used as my DSL router, its just purely for seeing if I can configure the WAN, see if it comes up, if it does, great, disconnect and stick my day to day router on.