SR520 Dissapointment

[bchris999]

I am very dissapointed with Ciscos release of the SR520. I was excited at first having a good software feature set and rack mountable (about the only ADSL router I have found that doesnt need a shelf). My dissapointment was with the CCA config software (using the latest 2.0.1 version). Having used CCA with the UC500, I was pleased with it (although I have moved away from CCA for my own system due to lack of support for EM, I will be sticking to it as much as possible for out UC500 installs to customers). However I came across the following major problems:

- ADSLoPOTS setup... the UK (and alot of europe as far as I know) use PPPoA for ADSL connections. There is no support for this within CCA

- VPN setup... trying to create a VPN tunnel between this and a Watchguard.... no support for IPSEC tunnels within CCA

- Firewall setup.... trying to create a basic firewall... no real options from the basic Low, Medium, High. I needed to allow Pings from a certain address range.

The dissapointment then continued even further when I couldnt even fall back to SDM to configure the device!!!

At this point I gave up and configured the entire thing by CLI, which resulted in the installation taking a whole day instead of a few hours.

I have since changed all our orders/quotes the include an SR520 and gone back to the 800 series. Furthermore, this is a major blow for us to move from Watchguard devices to Cisco devices (not every engineer is trained for CLI commands and we need a product with a easy but robust GUI)

I was wondering if anyone else has any comments on the SR520 outside the US? Any comments from Cisco? Is there something I have fundamentally missed with this? With CCA well into its 2.0 release I would have expected basic features like ADSL setup to be straight off the mark.

Can anyone from the UK tell me their experiences with the SR520?

[zylexcomputers]

And i've just bought two of these for a customer here in New Zealand, only to find the same problem - everything here is PPPoA also - I only found this thread after finding the lack of PPPoA config in CCA and searching. I guess CLI it is then to get it working (leaving it on PPPoE as above doesnt seem to work).

Cisco is the PPPoA config option ever going to be added to CCA for the SR520? If i'd have known i'd have to use CLI I would have probably bought something else, the only reason for buying SR520s was to simplify the solution (given it's a multi-site, UC500 at head office, these two SR520s being intended for branch offices.

[watson.daniel]

Same thing here, I was disappointed that because I expected the CCA to be a step forward from the SDM (which worked great!) and as soon as I saw PPPoA was not an option I simply picked one of my old 877 config's, rejigged it and slapped it back via tftp. The Zone Based Firewall is a hassle to deal with in CLI so i reverted back to CBAC & ACL's and everything works fine.

In the boot sequence you can see that the router is 870 board based so I guess the old kit is simply being repackaged as part of the SMB design until the SRP series get penetration. The only plus is that it is a lot cheaper than the 87x series. I would avoid these routers unless you are comfortable with CLI. Mixing CLI and GUI tend's to give you grief with IOS.

New Zealand etc are too small a market for them to bother changing things like this and it must be a nightmare for hte guys coding the CCA trying to integrate all the multitudes of product Cisco has produced.

[eljakimit]

Yep, in The Netherlands our provider also only does PPPoA. Cisco keeps insisting

that PPPoE will work, and it just doesn't. We're using CLI mixed with CCA. The CCA

keeps crashing when you enter PPPoA settings from the CLI, but as long as you

don't get near those settings in the CCA it will work...

Another disappointment is not being able to add certificates from the CCA. Basically

we can use the SR520 to reset the router and upgrade the firmware and not much else.

On another note: I got a slap on the wrist when posting an SR520 question here a

while ago. Cindy Toy suggested that even thought the SR520/ADSL is a small

business router it is not supported on this forum; only the SR520/T1 router can

be discussed here. I never understood that decision. We have a support contract

though so sometimes we just open up a TAC...