Cisco Systems 78-14784-02 manual Product Overview, C H A P T E R

C H A P T E R 1

Product Overview

The Cisco 831 router and Cisco SOHO 91 Ethernet-to-Ethernet routers can connect a corporate telecommuter or small office to an Internet service provider (ISP) over a broadband or Ethernet connection to the following sites:

•Corporate LANs

•The Internet

The Cisco 831 and SOHO 91 routers are switch-capable routers that provide a 4-port Ethernet switch for the LAN. The routers are capable of bridging and multiprotocol routing between LAN and WAN ports.

Cisco 831 and SOHO 91 routers support high-speed encryption, 10/100-Mbps switching, and dial backup functionality via the auxiliary console port. The autosensing function in the routers eliminates the need for a crossover cable and allows the routers to detect the medium dependent interface in normal mode (MDI) or medium dependent interface in crossover mode (MDIX) in any other PC/hub with a straight-through cable or crossover cable.

The dial backup function allows the user to connect an analog modem to the console port as a backup link to the WAN in case the ADSL service goes down. These features give the Cisco 831 and SOHO 91 routers a high level of performance and security.

The Cisco 831 router is designed with hardware-based encryption, while the Cisco SOHO 91 supports software-based encryption. The Cisco 831 router supports the ability to add Flash memory or SDRAM, either as a factory upgrade or a field-installed option. The SOHO 91 router has a fixed memory configuration.

	Cisco 831 Router and SOHO 91 Router Hardware Installation Guide
78-14784-02		1-1