Best T1 Routers

There are many choices when trying to pick out a T1 router. Features, price, and performance all come into play when picking the best T1 routers out of a large selection. Some brand-name T1 router manufacturers are Cisco, Samsung, Linksys, and Netopia, all of which have been in the networking business for a long period of time. Reliability and performance in their T1 routers will no doubt be top-of-the line.

One of the best T1 routers that you can buy today is the Cisco 1841, costing around $1500 for a new, out of the box product. It supports up to 800 VPN tunnels, a very large amount for a T1 router, much more than some other T1 routers. The Cisco 1841 has support for more than 30 expansion cards and a separate VPN acceleration module that further increase VPN performance.

There is also room for more integrated switch ports, increasing connectivity speed if you need it. Like with most high-end T1 routers, the Cisco 1841 includes an intruder prevention system and a powerful firewall designed to keep hackers with a malicious intent out of your network.

Another of the best T1 routers is the Linksys SVR3500 T1 Router, slightly cheaper than the Cisco 1841 at a price of $1200. The SVR3500 includes support for up to 24 T1 ports and includes dual Gigabit Ethernet ports for a fast connection inside your network itself. It has many useful features, such as 802.11q VLANs and an SPI firewall.

There are a couple of differences between the two products. Applications can be put on a computer for real-time monitoring, including traffic shaping and 802.11p. These features would be convenient for a network administrator. On the other hand, the Cisco 1841 supports more T1 ports for future expansion. Both of them support the basic features that a top-of-the-line T1 router should include. In addition to all these features, there are many more that an advanced user can utilize to their advantage, including SSL support for VPN.

An accessory that may come in handy when setting up a T1 is an additional CSU/DSU network interface module to plug into the expansion card slot on the T1 router. Also, long Gigabit Ethernet cables will come in handy if you are going to run a wired setup through the whole building or office.