basic questions

I have a few basic questions about using cisco routers. Hopefully someone can answer these for me.

If i have a two locations with internet access through a local ISP and i have an IPSEC tunnel connecting them what would I use a cisco router for?

I understand that routers segment large networks and reduce network traffic accross a LAN but what advantages do they provide over a WAN?

If I had multiple location all with High speed internet connections and IPsec Tunnels what purpose would the cisco routers perform? I assume that the answer tothis is to route traffic but what protocol would be best to use?

I know that these might seem like basic questions but it will help me get a better understanding of what these routers are fully capable of.

Where is the IPSec tunnel terminated?

We ran for awhile with a media convertor converting our 1000Base-LX provided by our ISP into 1000Base-SX to run through our premises fibre, which was then plugged into our Cisco PIX firewall -- with no router between the firewall and the demarcation point.

If we had been in a High Availability situation with multiple ISPs, we would have needed a router.

It depends how complex your connections are and where you want to put your security. If you only have a single external connection and you have a seperate security gateway, then the router might end up more or less a media (or protocol) convertor. If you have several connections, then there are a lot of different tricks you can play with modern routers in order to try to *reliably* detect link failures and automatically reconfigure the traffic routing.

Sorry but I do not understand what you mean. Could you plz describe your question further?

Basically, a router provides interfaces for WAN connection (where a switch does not), and it also provides many QoS services for WAN (which may be unnecessary for LAN). Not to mention other advanced features.

The routers can be used for routing and offloading IPSec processing. You may run any routing protocol, or simply add some static routes.

Thank you for your reply

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Walter Robers> > >I have a few basic questions about using cisco routers. Hopefully