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Company is expanding from a 30 person office to a 100 person office. We currently use SOHO routers and with the new expansion will probably need to look into enterprise-level routers.

What specs should I be focusing on that will ensure the stability and reliability of the network and internet speeds? Other bells and whistles such as VPN is second priority.

lamp_scaler
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  • It would be helpful to also know which specs to look for that's available on a publicly available data sheet for an enterprise-level router. – lamp_scaler Apr 01 '13 at 07:52
  • CPU throughput is important for routers especially when you start using VPNs and firewalls. 100Mbps fibre internet connection to your router is useless if you can only get a total of 20Mbps connection out of it - which brings us to the queestion - what internet connection do you have? – wookie919 Apr 02 '13 at 00:51
  • @wookie919 the new office will most likely have 20M to 50M internet connection. Also, if everyone is on wifi, will that affect stability in a big way? How is it compared to having everyone on wired connection via switches vs via wifi APs? – lamp_scaler Apr 03 '13 at 06:29
  • Any decent SOHO router should be able to handle 20M to 50M, no problems. As for your other question, it's not really a question of "stability". My company has wired connections to PCs and Access Points for portables. For doing actual work, I would always go with wired. Location matters too much for wireless - I wouldn't want to be the person having to work in a cubicle with the worst reception in the entire company. – wookie919 Apr 03 '13 at 08:11

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What specs should I be focusing on that will ensure the stability and reliability of the network

None. Seriously, a SOHO router that is not reliable and stable is a defective product and should be replaced under warranty. I am always surprised by the amount of bullshit people take these days for low end routers. That thing is not stable is not acceptable. Been using SOHO for years before moving to Mikrotik (I used AVM) and never had any problems.

Company is expanding from a 30 person office to a 100 person office

That puts you maybe 900 people below enterprise size ;)

Seriously, get a decent mid range router. Either if you know how to use them from Cisco, or if you want something that works as good and is cheaper - a lot - from Mikrotik.

The exact model seriously depends on what you do - how much internet you have etc. - a 100 people architecture company may not need as much bandwidth than a trading company. Without more information given that can not be answered. It also depends what you plan to do with this bandwidth.

TomTom
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  • What I'm trying to really understand is what specs differentiate a home router, a SOHO router, and enterprise router. Especially in terms of stability and reliability. Isn't max concurrent connection one specific parameter? – lamp_scaler Apr 01 '13 at 12:59
  • None. A chip is stable or not - though high end routers have something like VRRP to mirror between two routers. Max connections - unless you use NAT, a router has no concept of "connections". A connection is not needed to route packets. Size? yes - try finding a 36 core soho router. Try having a soho router able to handle 10gigabit links. – TomTom Apr 01 '13 at 13:52