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We are having a leased line installed by British Telecom, they have routed the fibre via our telecoms 'cupboard' (enclosed glorified cupboard in our reception area) which has no airflow and only 2 medium sized plastic vents (top & bottom).

The existing Samsung digital telephone system is in this cupboard in a 12U rack cabinet (with no space). It generates some heat but nothing substantial - we've had no problems with it getting too hot/overheating even with the recent heatwave our area of the UK has experienced.

My question is, BT are supplying (leasing?) a Cisco 2921 ISR as part of the install. We were not expecting anything quite this big (our existing lines are 2 standard DSL lines coming via this cabinet and then routed using copper to our routers in our server room). BT have said they cannot site the 2921 anywhere else than this telecoms cupboard. The 2921 is not wall mountable and we have no additional room for another rack cabinet in the cupboard.

Our current running solution is some kind of small table to support the 2921 so we can place it in the bottom of the cupboard. But I have concerns over the airflow (there is very little) and the possible heat generated by the 2921 in this enclosed (3.5m X 4m X 2m) space. Are we going to be ok without any additional cooling/fans?

HaydnWVN
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  • We're still waiting for our 'IP address details' from BT which supposedly should've been sent the time of the install (2 weeks ago). It's taken us 10 MONTHS with BT to actually get the line installed... Their quoted '10 weeks' installation time was slightly out! – HaydnWVN Aug 27 '14 at 10:29

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BT have said they cannot site the 2921 anywhere else than this telecoms cupboard. The 2921 is not wall mountable and we have no additional room for another rack cabinet in the cupboard.

Actually the Cisco 2921 is wall mountable. Please consider using a wall mount if you have space for it.

I have concerns over the airflow (there is very little) and the possible heat generated by the 2921 in this enclosed (3.5m X 4m X 2m) space. Are we going to be ok without any additional cooling/fans?

If cooling is a problem in this room, please be sure to account for the router's BTU output and add cooling as-required. I can't comment any more on the cooling question other than you need fresh air exchange (instead of recirculating the same air in the room), if this new router will bump you over your BTU cooling capacity in the room.

Mike Pennington
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  • Thanks Mike but wall mounting the 2921 on one of those would take up more space than a 6U cabinet so that is not an option (no space). No BTU output is mentioned on any of the documentation and I have no idea on the capacity in the cupboard. I'm of the opinion to leave it to BT to advise us - I just hope the engineer installing it has a clue! (It's taken them nearly 10 months to install this line so far...) – HaydnWVN Aug 11 '14 at 07:59
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    @HaydnWVN, a good rule of thumb for cooling... look at the power consumption of the unit in Watts, convert to BTUs, and that's how much extra cooling you need. Apologies, I thought you were saying you *wanted* to wall-mount this router – Mike Pennington Aug 11 '14 at 08:09
  • We'd love to wall mount it - but just not enough room! The only info on the 2921 power usage I can find is 60 Watts (205 BTU) which seems very low, but well within the capacity of the cupboard we have. But to me 60W seems very low for the size of the unit?! – HaydnWVN Aug 11 '14 at 11:29
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    @HaydnWVN, a non-PoE AC system burns 60W with no modules plugged into it ([reference](http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/routers/2900-series-integrated-services-routers-isr/data_sheet_c78_553896.html)). When you account for modules, it will consume up to 320W. – Mike Pennington Aug 12 '14 at 01:04
  • It'll have no modules installed (no requirement, this is only a very basic 'first' install) so I based my calculations on 150W as it seemed a more accurate figure (to me) also accounting for some from the phone system already in place. – HaydnWVN Aug 15 '14 at 07:07
  • BT engineer came to install today and has moved the 2921 for us to our IT room with an `ADVA FSP150CP` installed in the cupboard I've been concerned about... Even wall mounted it! Now the 2921 has been setup our software IT guys have drawn a blank (they do our server/gateway/routing setup) on how they configure things with the existing Draytek Vigor 2830 so a learning curve now for us to try and configure the router to use ADSL and WAN at the same time (until we switch our MX records over)! – HaydnWVN Aug 15 '14 at 11:52