Yamaha as a company is well known worldwide as a manufacturer of quality motorbikes, sports boats, engines, pro audio gear and guitars. What a lot of people don't know is that they also produce a range of highly reliable range of routers including advanced VoIP solutions, VPN routers and firewalls.

The Yamaha RTX1200 Giga Access VPN Router is one product from Yamaha that has really caught our eye. Released at the end of October 2008 as solution for small to medium sized enterprises the RTX1200 has a lot of positives. The biggest is of course gigabit - allowing seamless WAN/LAN gigabit connections. With B-FLETS, KDDI and YUSEN in some places in Japan now offering gigabit connections, you would now be able to have gigabit throughput over your home LAN with the RTX1200.

Until know it has been very difficult to source a gigabit router which offers gigabit from the WAN side through to the LAN side without paying more money than my mother-in-law spends on an afternoons spree on the Ginza. With power requirements of 16W it is also an environmentally friendly choice. It is fanless and so very quiet, has no moving parts and doesn't suck up dust. Another advantage is that with Yamaha not being well known outside of Japan it isn't a likely target for cracking - with criminals targeting more common set-ups such as IOS.

A very interesting feature that we have never seen before is connectivity over NTT Docomo's High Speed J Mobile connection using the A2502 usb dongle. This allows for data transfer over Japan's mobile network. If you were setting up a router without WAN access you would be able to connect to the router via the mobile connection. It would be nice to see an Emobile connection, as this is more widespread here in Japan and comparatively cheaper, but this does represent a unique move forward in terms of network systems accessibility from a trouble shooting and deployment perspecitve.

Configuration is similar to configuring Cisco IOS, although the commands make it a little simpler. Settings can be written to MicroSD flash memory, or to USB (the machine boots in that order) allowing support of remote sites where an engineer is not present. Another useful function is that log files are automatically written to file on power down allowing for ease of trouble shooting - note that if the power is cut - say by pulling out the power cord, then the log will not be written to file.

With a large number of companies looking to cut costs given the dark economic times faced at present, options like Yamaha (and in the not-too-distant future Buffalo) start to make a good deal of sense as alternatives to more expensive and well-known network equipment from vendors such as Juniper Networks or Cisco Systems. The catch is that, although the price is great, documentation, the web-based adminsitration GUI and support for Yamaha routers is only available in Japanese. And speaking to a Yamaha representative, we were told that there is no plan to offer either the web admin Gui or the documentation in English. The command line interface is however in English.

At Denphone we have been using Yamaha routers - both internally and externally at multiple sites supporting VoIP systems with over 200 users and have found them to be extremely reliable. Over the past 3 years, downtime attributable to the routers can be measured in minutes, comfortable putting Yamaha in the sigma six level of reliability. The only time we had a problem with a Yamaha router (RTX1100) was where we were running a VPN for data traffic alongside VoIP traffic outside the VPN. As a result of having to choose which packets to place into the VPN, the router crashed under an extreme load. We also have experienced similar problems with lower-end Cisco routers such as the 1812J.

Features of the Yamaha RTX1200:

• LAN Ports: all 10/100/1000. Lan 1x8 ports, Lan 2x1 port, Lan 3x1 port. (Denphone note: Lan 1 would be used for the inside local network with lan 2 as WAN or 3 possibly being used for DMZ services, such as webserver or alternatively for a backup WAN interface connection.)
• Power: 16W.
• ISDN Port: 1 S/T (BRI) Port.
• Throughput: 1 gigabyte/second.
• VPN Throughput: 200Mbit/second (AES).
• VPN Capability: IPsec / PPTP / IPIP Tunnel (nb. IPIP Tunnel cannot be used with encryption).
• VPN Tunnel's: 100 VPN Tunnels.
• Routing Protocols: OSPF, RIP, RIP2, BGP4.
• VoIP: SIP-NAT, UPnP. IAXy connections are easy to setup.
• NAT Sessions: 20,000.
• QoS Capability: VPN QoS, Dynamic Traffic Controller, Dynamic Class Control, Prioritization, Bandwidth slicing, Bandwidth Prioritization, and Congestion Notification.
• Layer 2 QoS: VLAN tagging, ToS->CoS, Coloring (ToS, CoS).
• Multicast: IPv6 Multicast.
• Backup Capability: VRRP / Automatic Line Fallover.
• Security Capabilities: URL Filter, Winny (Japanese P2P client) filter, DHCP authentification, LAN1 - Switchport splitting, DHCP/MAC address filtering, Share filter.
• Configuration Management: Switch to backup routes via Email, Download button, Status Lamp, Removable flash memory.
• Size: A4 (1/2U-ish). 1U rackmount kit available as an optional extra.

Yamaha's webpage introducing the RTX1200 is here (Japanese only): RTX 1200.

Firmware for Yamaha routers, including the RTX1200 can be downloaded here: Firmware Releases for Yamaha Router Series.

Here is a quick guide from Denphone to help you get started working with Yamaha routers: Getting started with Yamaha Routers.

Denphone would like to thank Mr. Yoshimi Yokoyama of Sumisho Computer Systems Corporation for his kind advice and explanations regarding the Yamaha RTX1200 Giga Access VPN Router.