A Great Small Business Network Router for your Design

Tuesday, November 2, 2010 by Chad Whaley
If you've read any of my previous blogs, you may have noticed that I'm a very big fan of Adtran routers.  I've used them across a wide spectrum of projects and have never been dissatisfied.  If you've ever stepped into a telecom closet, you have most likely seen an Adtran router mounted on the wall being used by the local telecom carrier.  Adtran routers are very effective for VoIP Network Design and/or the standard Small Business Network Design.

The Interconnect Group, Inc. Blog - Adtran Netvanta 3448 - FrontOne model that I really like is the Adtran Netvanta 3438 Multiservice Access Router.  It has a network interface module that will support up two T1s.  In addition to the two Ethernet ports, there is a built in 8-port, non-blocking Ethernet switch with an optional PoE add-on.  I've used the NV3448 for both hosted VoIP solutions Indiana projects and small business network solutions alike.  I prefer getting the version with the Enhanced Feature Pack (EFP) more for the Voice Quality Monitoring (VQM) feature than the VPN capabilities although the VPN feature is very robust.  The VQM comes in very handy when monitoring client's historical VoIP call quality.

The Interconnect Group, Inc. - Adtran Netvanta 3448 - BackAdtran offers both a good GUI and command line interface (CLI).  I commonly use the CLI for my initial configuration setup as well as those times when I'm troubleshooting a tough problem.  I use the GUI for general maintenance and monitoring tasks.  Since you can see the raw SIP messaging at the CLI level in Adtran's Operating System (AOS), additional steps of capturing SIP messaging and importing into Wire Shark isn't necessary.

I would be remiss in my blogging duties if I wrote an article about Adtran routers and didn't mention their industry leading warranty.  Adtran stands behind their products and offers a 5 year warranty on most products and a 10 year warranty on some select product lines.  Adtran offers free firmware updates for their hardware for the lifetime of that hardware.  Adtran offers free telephone support on their products which is staffed by English speaking, Engineering degreed US based staff.  This is a very key selling point to me and my small business network design clients.

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