I'm new to Cisco routers, but have an 877 installed in a small office for Internet access with NAT for a single external IP address. Ethernet port 0 is connected to the office's main Ethernet switch.
It has three "spare" ethernet ports which set me to wondering if there was anything interesting they could be used for.
The 877 is described as having a four port *switch*. From this I inferred that it was not really intended for Ethernet-Ethernet routing. However since it supports VLANs, can the 877 be used for any of ...
- Guest Internet access. E.g. allow a visitor to plug in a notebook PC to a wallport patched to Ethernet port 3 on the router, with the router configured to prevent traffic passing between Ethernet ports 0 (main LAN) and 3 (visitor)?
- Ditto with DHCP service to the visitor PC?
- A DMZ? E.g. plug a webserver into ethernet port 2 and configure the router so that inbound traffic to port 80 gets mapped to the webserver, which has no access to the main LAN?
- Something else?
The 800 series also have a serial console port, which I believe doubles as a virtual AUX port. Can this be used for anything useful? (other than as a console port for configuring the router)
- attach a V.90 modem for remote dial-in to router and from there telnet to a server?
- Something else?