Could you be doing more with our broadband routers?

Could you be doing more with our broadband routers?

Zyxel has a very successful line of customer-premises equipment for broadband connection but while these products are extremely popular win ISPs, we suspect that not too many partners and customers know about the reliable operation and benefits they offer – it’s time that changed, says Jon Pearce, Regional Director Market Development Europe.

You may not be aware of it, but Zyxel has a very successful side to its business developing and producing broadband routers for Internet service providers (ISPs). What you may also not realise is that this customer premises equipment (CPE) is also available for our partners to offer and our end-user customers to buy.

Usually, a router will be provided to a broadband customer by the ISP as part of the overall package. A number of service providers use Zyxel routers for this purpose. We will often adapt these products for their specific needs, but the standard versions of some of these routers are also available from our distributors.

Why change?

But why would a customer you want a different router? Well, there are a number of reasons. First of all, you simply might not want to be tied-into the choice that the service provider makes for you. If you have your own router that meets your needs, you just need the basic broadband connection and nothing else. Or it may be the case that the router provided by the ISP is just not suited to your needs.

There can be more complex reasons why you will want to choose your own router. Organisations that need to have routers distributed in many places around their premises – such as a hotel or hospital – or a business that occupies an older building, where pre-broadband telephone wires may be in-situ, but it is not possible to install newer Ethernet or fibre cables.

In such cases, there may be a need to set up what would effectively be a small ISP within the building, with a DSL access multiplexer (DSLAM) at the centre (which Zyxel can also provide) and several routers connected to that device using the older telephone wires. That’s a surprisingly common requirement.

Keeping it simple

Whatever the reason, Zyxel has a solution to meet these different requirements. While our CPE range extends beyond the products I’m going to mention below, for the purposes of keeping things simple, we make what we describe as ‘good’, ‘better’ and ‘best’ options to our channel partners and customers.

All three are reliable, robust, well-established devices that many thousands of users rely on every day for their broadband connection and home or small office WiFi.

  • The ‘good’, or entry-level offering, is the VMG1312-T20B. This single band router provides VDSL2 vectoring for optimized performance and coverage, along with basic 802.11n wireless.
  • The ‘better’ option is the VMG3625-T50B, which is a dual-band device that can support gigabit WAN connectivity and 802.11ac WiFi.
  • Top of the range or ‘best’ is the VMG8825-T50K. This is a premium, dual-band gateway, with dedicated voice ports and full support for high-speed 802.11ac wireless.

These routers are ideal for home, small office or distributed use, and there is a solution to meet every scenario.

We are always talking about the features and benefits that our switches, wireless access points, and security gateways offer. But even though they are amongst the most successful of our products, we rarely talk about our routers. While some partners do use them to meet project needs from time to time, we believe there is much more potential for our partners to offer them as alternatives to standard ISP offerings, and for our end-user customers to benefit from their solid performance, features and reliability.

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