firewall

Cisco adopting strategies to compete in the small business line

Cisco is almost synonymous with big business in the network infrastructure market but recently they have really been working to make themselves more friendly to the SMB market.

Here is a good article about that:

 http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2009/09…

Working at a consulting company that is a Cisco partner and has a large focus on small business I find that there are a lot of great Cisco products in the price range my client’s look for.

The ASA 5505 for example is a great little firewall with a lot of good features and price was is right on the mark and  often cheaper then equivalent Watchguard and Sonicwall products. As well  the UC500 Integrated services voip router is a great solution for a small business who wants a voice solution with a reasonable cost, particularly if they need a primary router/firewall and/or small wireless solution in any case.

Watchguard MUVPN not working due to Mcafee firewall

I hate personal firewall products but none so much as I hate mcafee. I was testing a MUVPN and the tunnell just wouldn’t established. I turned that thing into swiss cheese, it shouldn’t have been blocking anything but the VPN tunnel STILL wouldn’t come up until I actually turned off the service. Gah it’s frustrating.

A review of the Cisco ASA 5505

I deal with a lot of small business’s and branch offices and up until now we generally have been promoting the Watchguard X10e for their firewall needs. However I have recently been very impressed with the Cisco ASA 5505 for this business space. Its got great functionality, robustness and the price point is far cheaper then I think most people might realize. For 10 user license pack CDW is retailing a unit a 414 dollars! For a Cisco partner such as my company we can usually do even better.