[AusNOG] Cisco 887VA vs Cisco 867VAE

[Jarryd Sullivan]

G'day Radek,

Just wanted to give you my experience with the 867VAE. I personally run a 867VAE at home with DHCP/DNS/NAT/ZBFW/CBAC (both IPv4 and IPv6 to assist with return traffic being allowed in) with a 100/40 NBN service and 4 active users each night when we are all home. The router is a little beast. If you are doing a speed test the CPU will be pegged at 100% however the router is still perfectly responsive via SSH, it'll easily do 95/38 for me without skipping a beat even at 100% CPU. That being said it's a router I would not recommend for high speed internet services with more than 5-10 users. The biggest issue this router seems to have with performance is the more users/NAT translations the worse it performs.

The Cisco 887VA I don't have as much info on as to how it performs but I've deployed a few doing DNS/NAT/ACLs in 15-20 user environments with 20-50Mbps internet services and it's performed well. It doesn't struggle as much with more users as the 867VAE will.

As a lot of other people have said there are benefits to both, the 867VAE is tasty with its GigE WAN port and additional Gig port for uplink to a switch or the likes, not to mention also supporting VDSL (I've not tested, but I did use it for ADSL prior to NBN) but the 887VA is definitely a bit more beefy in terms of hardware. Have used one of the 887VA fast Ethernet ports for NBN and it works well too.

Both are great routers, but definitely aimed at smaller offices with less users (if using high speed internet connections and expecting to get the max throughput) from my personal experience.

Jarryd Sullivan


From: AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Radek Tkaczyk
Sent: Monday, 2 November 2015 4:06 PM
To: 'AusNOG Mailing List' <ausnog at ausnog.net>
Subject: [AusNOG] Cisco 887VA vs Cisco 867VAE

Hi Guys,

For those that use Cisco CPE routers, I'd like to get some opinions on these two models of routers, Cisco 887VA and Cisco 867VA.

We have always used the Cisco 887VA for ADSL2+ connections for our business clients (those that won't pay from proper Ethernet over Copper, and a Cisco 881), but with the NBN FTTN now coming up, we are re-examining our preferred choice of routers.

Both support VDSL2, so no problem there for NBN FTTN compatibility (hopefully), but the Cisco 867VA has the added benefit of having BOTH VDSL2 WAN and gig WAN (Cisco 887VA only has a single VDSL WAN port). The Cisco 867VAE also has an additional gig LAN port, as well as the standard 4 x 100Mbps LAN ports.

I have always thought that the 867VAE was a cheap alternative to the "proper" Cisco 887VA,and we always used the Cisco 887VA so that we had the best option available, but am interested to hear what other people's thoughts are here. Especially considering that the Cisco 867VAE is cheaper than the Cisco 887VA (not by much though)

Regards,

Radek Tkaczyk
Ph: 0413 383 231


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