The scenario: You’ve found yourself working at a company that is experiencing phenomenal growth. The employees have actually decupled in the past year and show no signs of slowing in the near future (on this note, when was the last time you saw the “decupled” in print?). You have inherited a network that is truly a Frankensteinian creation that not even the original architects understand any more. You have noticed that you neither have a working firewall nor a decent VPN system, though Cisco VPN is used by a handful of key employees to connect to a Cisco 1800 series router. The IP scheme for the organization, which spans three sites, is using the 192.x.x.x address space. You wish to straighten everything out with a minimum of downtime and as seamless as possible for the end-users. What do you do?
Well, instead of telling you what to do, allow me to tell you what not to do. Not just that, let me drill into your collective skulls what not to do. Are you ready? Here it comes:
Do not, and this is key, so write it down… do not buy a Cisco SA 500 series device.
