Can "cable" routers be used with metro ethernet?

[cremes]

I tried searching for "metro ethernet" to see if this topic had been discussed before but came up dry.

Several friends of mine just moved into a small house in Chicago. The prior owners had run a small business out of a back room and had fiber installed from RCN Metro. They are looking to get it hooked back up since they can a lot of bandwidth for very little money (split amongst them).

They don't know much about networking other than what they have done with regular cable/dsl connections.

The RCN service is described here:

http://www.rcnmetro.com/download/30_internet_access.pdf

I called RCN about this service. The fiber drop goes into a Cisco 3750 switch (no router).

My question is simple. Could they use a "broadband" router like the D-Link DIR-685 (top of the charts) to terminate this connection and provide router & firewall services? If not, why not?

Thanks for your help.

 

[thiggins]

I'm not familiar with the service. But it seems odd that fiber would go right into a switch.

Best is to ask RCN for recommended equipment to use.

 

[jdabbs]

I don't know what the going rate is between SFPs vs router fiber modules. May be cheaper to go the switch route, but a router/firewall is certainly desirable from the customer's perspective. Perhaps they opt for a switch to serve multiple customers in the same building. Since they specified an exact model switch, I assume that they are providing it, but your use of the word "terminate" sounds like they are leaving you with just a fiber drop. Which is it?

If you are connecting to their switch, a broadband router would work, but keep in mind that it will perform NAT on only 1 public IP.

 

[cremes]

Their demarc is the 3750. The SMF is terminated in the 3750 so any equipment my buddies provide will connect to that switch. I am assuming (I will verify with the RCN folks) that they are providing some layer3 upstream so that the little broadband switch at the far end doesn't have to perform any routing protocol gymnastics.

RCN will recommend (or has recommended) a 7206 with a small switch or a 4948 with router-on-a-stick to take the hand-off. I just want to provide the cheapest hand-off for my friends because I really don't want to manage any kind of Cisco ASA setup for them; they need to be able to manage this themselves.

I appreciate the feedback so far. Many thanks...

 

[cremes]

All up and working

I just wanted to circle back and answer my own question. Using a cable modem router to terminate this circuit has worked *very* well.

The circuit came right up (kudos to RCN) and passed traffic on the first try. However, there were a few issues that needed to be worked through.

1. The handoff from their switch was hardcoded to 100/full. It was switched to autonegotiate, so the router speaks to the switch over a gigabit link now.

2. Download speeds were impressive but upload speeds topped out around 2Mb (on a 60Mb circuit). It took approximately 3 days of experimentation for RCN to figure out the correct configuration for their "policer" process which handles the rate limiting.

I would bet that in most cases their customers never even test the circuit and discover this problem.

3. As a side note to #2, RCN only rate limits on the way *up* (from customer to RCN). They don't really do much rate limiting on the outbound path (RCN to customer).

The router chosen for this task is the DLink DIR-685. Picked it up at Amazon for $160. Works like a champ!