Keeping up with the Jones’ Wireless Network

Wondering what brands IT experts trust in the trenches of enterprise IT and at home? IT Knowledge Exchange members answered the call.

Mr. Denny uses AT&T’s U-verse offerings, a cable modem, router and WiFi all in one, while relying on Cisco’s WiFi Linksys and routers and switches at the office. Jinteik‘s been through the gamut at home, from D-Link and Aztech modems, D-Link switch, Netgear 3-in-1 and TPLink 3-in-1, but at the office he’s a Cisco switch guy. At home, Shanekearney daisy chained a 24-port Cisco 2950 switch to a Cisco DSL router, while dealing with a mixture of 3Com, Cisco, D-Link and Netgear at work. He’d rather work in an all Cisco environment since he knows the CMD line arguments already.

Monkez prefers SpeedTouch at home due to its ease of configuration, but he also recommends 3Com switches if bandwidth isn’t a major concern at home.

Asishqupta uses D-Link or Linksys (Cisco) at home and Cisco at the office. Carlosdl‘s company uses 3Com and Cisco.

Dvord2569, our winner of the 150 knowledge points, uses Linksys RVS4000 at home and hosts web/mail/etc. with it. His only complaint? The lack of support and documentation; it took him a while to track down a software update. At work he happily relied on WatchGuard Firebox x750e until software updates after 9.1 disabled the ability to easily provide proxy and filter reports. Dvord2569 quips, “Apparently WatchGuard subscribes to the M$ model of removing features as you ‘upgrade’ the product.” As a result, his latest buildout will be WatchGuard XTM 22 because “it simply provides all the features I need without bleeding me dry with subscriptions, being overpriced, or limiting the number of LAN nodes that can use it.” Thanks for such a thorough analysis, Dvord2569!

Yasirirfan is a Cisco man himself and recommends Linksys internet routers for SMBs. Learnteach is fortunate enough to have a Cisco partner at the enterprise level, providing his company with great support and discounts. He also likes Adtran and Juniper, but believes that Cisco performs superior on all fronts: training, knowledge base, troubleshooting help, SMB products, and support.

Mitrum wraps up a common sentiment: CISCO only.

Melanie Yarbrough is the assistant community editor at ITKnowledgeExchange.com. Follow her on Twitter or send her an email at Melanie@ITKnowledgeExchange.com.

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