Learning by Doing: CISCO Certified Network ... - SCN Research

More importantly to you right now if you wanted to find information about a CISCO
2500 router at CISCO’s website you would almost need a miracle to find it unless you
knew a 2500 router is classified as an “Access” router. Now, you could go to the CISCO
website, access the technical document section, then select the “access” or “modular
access” routers heading, and then select 2500’s to get your information. This is much
easier. I guess the old phrase “easy when you know how” really fits here. Table 1 shows
a general overview of the CISCO routers and switches and which layer they are typically
attributed.
CORE
6500 switches
8500 switches
7000 routers
10000 routers
12000 routers
DISTRIBUTION
4000 switches
5000 switches
6000 switches
3600 routers
4000 routers
ACCESS
700 routers
800 routers
1700 routers
2500 routers
2600 routers
1900 switches
2820 switches
2900 switches
Table 1—CISCO routers and switches as they correlate to the 3-layer hierarchical design
model.
The 2500 router seems to be the staple of many CCNA Academies worldwide. Too bad
for them, because CISCO has recently declared these products to be “End of Life” and
will not be supporting them, or doing software upgrades on them very shortly. There
certainly will be a lot of schools scrambling to find money to replace them. Let’s look at
what some people call the “front” of a 2500 router in figures 1, 2, and 3. The 2500’s are,
for the most part, “fixed” units. There is very little we can do to change them. If we
need three Ethernet ports, then we will have to add another router. At best we can have
two Ethernet ports (using transceivers on the AUI ports).
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