Why not to buy a Cisco 1721 and what you should know
The Cisco 1721 router is an obsolete enterprise class of router intended for smaller sized networked locations. Just to be clear, Cisco has stopped producing the product and declared an end of life on it. However the 1721 is still usable in small offices where the performance demands are less than what larger offices would place on routers. Because the device is no longer being made the routers are often available quite reasonably as used which would make it a fine choice for a training router as well. It is not rack mountable reflecting the originally intended use for a location not large enough to necessarily have a rack to mount the router to. However it is still Cisco brand with all the benefits that come with that. Cisco still dominates the market for business networking hardware. Standard WIC cards fit in and out of the router, and most networking staff are familiar with the IOS software that it comes with making maintenance and configuration widely available which would be more difficult with a product from another vendor. It is also worth noting that, as with all products by this name the cards are modular and interchangeable with most other Cisco products. Older Cisco hardware is generally a fine choice for a training router.
The 1721 comes with some permanent interfaces from the factory that cannot be removed. However you can easily take any two WIC’s and put it in here to get the function of your choice. These include:
- 1 10/100 (copper) ethernet ports
- 2 Wan Interface Card (WIC) slots for the cards of your choice
- 1 internal expansion slot
- the standard console/auxiliary console port pair
The 1721 router is not rack mountable and is usually placed on a shelf. Furthermore it only has a single power supply. It is very small, but in a low-use job it should do fine. Most small offices using this to connect to a WAN or directly to the internet should be fine as long as they have a separate firewall as the throughput speeds are usually quite minor. It does only have a 100 Mbs ethernet card without installing a WIC so you would also do best to avoid using it for inter-VLAN routing. It should be able to handle NAT responsibility for a low demand or a small set of users as long as the load isn’t heavy. It still has a plausible place in the modern network, but if any advanced tasks are desired your routers pick something beefier and newer. It probably isn’t possible to get a current IOS for this device. On the upside the hardware is much cheaper than new Cisco routers. If you are looking for a current router all 1800 series routers are still being produced and sold.
Check out our selection of Cisco 1721 routers at our network hardware store or our Current 1800 Cisco routers. If you want to know what we think of them please read our review of the 1841 Cisco router we certainly encourage you to do so. .