It’s no secret we are facing some difficult economic circumstances at the moment, but adding useful services to your Cisco routers does not necessarily equate to purchasing new hardware or software. Many built-in functions exist for Cisco routers that are just not utilized, especially in the VOIP sector. I once heard “When is a router not a router? When it’s a Cisco ISR Router.” That statement could not be truer, Cisco IOS Routers have so many features not specifically related to routing and it’s these features that I personally believe set them apart from the junipers and other router vendors of the world. The modular nature of a Cisco router allows you to install modules that can do such varied non-routing tasks like physical security! Check out http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/ps/index.html for more info on this.
Listed below are some of my favourite features to turn on for customers.
Feature: Fax to email.
Available on: Most Cisco routers with PSTN connectivity and an IP voice image (i.e. 99 percent of CCME and CCM routers.)
Description: I don’t mind telling you that I hate fax: the 80’s called, they want their email protocol back. But faxing is part of everyday life and the best we can do is make it less painful, to do this you want to look at something called “Fax-to-email” A TCL Script that runs on most routers and allows you to have incoming faxes converted to email and sent to an email right on your router! The faxes are attached to the email as .tiff, and you can specify you want them delivered to any email. The advantages of this approach are:
• Adding an extra fax line is as easy as setting up another dialpeer
• Cisco IOS Routers are never busy unless you’re completely out of PSTN lines
• you can setup quite a few different fax numbers for different people.
I want it! How long will it take to configure?
The actual feature itself is quite easy to setup, taking approx 1-2 Hours. This feature is not compatible with MGCP however so conversion of your VOIP gateway from MGCP to H.323

Feature: Single Number Reach
Available on: Cisco Call Manager Express routers and Cisco Call Manager.
Description: When you walk away from your desk to go to lunch, do you forward your desk phone to your mobile? What if your mobile could ring and be answered while your desk phone rang at the same time? You could pick the call up on either the mobile or desk phone and even have this feature enabled-disabled based on time (so if someone calls your desk phone at midnight it does not ring your mobile and disturb your slumber!) But wait! There’s more, this feature even allows you to seamlessly transfer between the two, so if you answer your mobile in the car park, when you get to your desk you can pick up the handset and the call will be seamlessly transferred to the handset.

I want it! How long will it take to configure?
In CCME this feature is included in version 7.0 and above but for CCM it will require a few DLU’s per user your enable this feature for. The configure time is around 15 minutes per user you wish to enable for this feature. You need at least version 7.0 of CCME or CCM.

Feature: Netflow
Available on: Most Cisco IOS Routers
Description: This is one of the only features on our list not specifically for your users but rather for YOU the administrator, this fairly standard feature provides full visibility of traffic information travelling through your link including top talkers, protocol utilization and other detail. The information provided is very specific: you can drill down to showing the individual connections of an IP Address in your network for a particular period of time!
I want it! How long will it take to configure?
While the actual configuration of the netflow on the Cisco IOS Router is quite simple, a netflow collector or server must be chosen, there are a variety of vendors who make netflow collectors, some free, some not and some that run on Windows while others run on Linux. So while the config of the Netflow on the router takes approx 1 hour the collector config can vary depending on the software chosen.

Feature: Microsoft OCS Integration
Available on: Call Manager 7 and Microsoft OCS
Description: While more of a project rather than a feature to be turned on, I wanted to mention this feature simply because we here at Synergy love it, basically its full blown integration of your OCS client with your Cisco IP Phone, including presence, click-to-dial from OCS and Cisco soft phone support right inside of OCS (so you don’t need to install separate Cisco Software to provide soft phone functionality for your users.) Speak to your account manager to have a demo organized.
I want it! How long will it take to configure?
As I mentioned this is more of a project-style configuration, and thus this answer varies depending on what version of CCM your using, how your OCS environment is setup etc. etc.

Feature: Cisco IOS IPS
Available on: Cisco IOS Routers with Security feature set.
Description: Intrusion Prevention System/Intrusion Detection System is one of those technologies that you do not see around very much, mostly because of a misunderstanding of exactly what kind of security it provides; very briefly IPS is basically deep packet inspection to help prevent exploits such as code-red, SQL Slammer worm and other types of exploit-based attacks. A popular IPS technology is snort, the Linux-based IPS/IDS. The issue with snort is that it is normally used in an IDS configuration rather than an IPS configuration and thus cannot block single packets along with some other limitations. Cisco IOS IPS provides full IPS functionality including being able to block single packets and is a great way to add more security to your network without the complication and overhead of an additional server in your network.
I want it! How long will it take to configure?
Depending on the type of traffic you allow into your network and the typical usage patterns of your users this will take approximately 1-3 days to setup and tune to your environment.

Feature: SSL VPN
Available on: Cisco IOS Routers with AIM-VPN-SSL Module, Cisco ASA’s
Description: Again, like the Microsoft OCS integration this is a personal favourite of the engineers here at Synergy. The basic idea behind SSLVPN is that end users do NOT have to have Cisco VPN client software, rather all the end user has to do is visit an https:// webpage, enter their username and password, allows an active-x or java controller to download and just like that they are VPN’d into the network! The data confidentiality being provided by the fact that SSL is used to tunnel the traffic and thus is totally secure. This has the added benefit of working through any firewall that allows SSL (which is pretty much all of them) and mercifully avoiding issues with NAT. You can extend the functionality further by providing Secure-Desktop functionality, which keeps all the information used during the session in RAM on the VPN PC and deletes it after the user disconnects. You can even ensure that before allowing the VPNing pc on the network that it has up to date antivirus signatures and windows updates.
I want it! How long will it take to configure?
Depending on what features you would like for your SSL VPN this can take half a day to a day.