Re: Is Cisco equpiment de facto for you?

[Greg Whynott <Greg.Whynott () oicr on ca>]

the pro curve line is cheap and the standard support contract price can't be beat (life time free).   For many ' normal 
' deployments it would be a good choice.    in a 10Gbit HPC  or highly redundant environment I'd probably be looking at 
Extreme or Force 10.

There is a feature on the Cisco 6500 series which is very appealing for those needing highly redundant / quick fail 
over,  VSS.   Currently you can only get it on 6500's or better,  so the cost of admission is huge,  and you have to 
have the physical space to mount the units.  Extreme has a similar feature which is available threw out most of the 
product line,  meaning you don't have to drop 6 figures for a redundant zero time fail over solution and can fit it 
into as little as 2Us in the rack.   I recently set up a pair of Summit 650's using the virtual switch feature.  I have 
multiple 10Gbit clients terminated to the pair.  zero time fail over when a link goes down,  its nice.      This is 
what I find is the trend with features and Cisco,   Cisco sticks with what is known and a bit reluctant to throw a new 
feature into the mix,  where as a compeating vendor sees that as an opertunity.    Cisco is slow and steady,  where the 
other vendors tend to be lighter on their feet.   sometimes when you are quick on your feet,  you trip more often than 
the one walking slowly.


-g



On Jan 10, 2011, at 12:04 PM, Brandon Kim wrote:

> Wow, overall consensus is that there are quite a few that are migrating to Juniper from Cisco.
>
> I am a bit biased because I have spent an awful amount of time invested into Cisco and understanding how to configure 
> them.
> But being a former business owner, I also am very much sensitive to costs and business needs.
>
> For those that have been Cisco focused, do you stay fully objective, and are you willing to pitch another vendor 
> knowing that you will
> have to learn a new IOS? And that that will be your time that you'll have to spend to understand the product and 
> support it?
>
> We have been selling HP procurves to SMB's because of the cost factor. I don't really mind them all that much. I've 
> tried to fit Cisco switches
> in the mix but their pricing is just so much more as well as the smartnet costs. They really price themselves out and 
> that is unfortunate.
>
> I will be looking at refreshing our core switches and routers soon so I will stay objective as much as I can.
>
> =)
>
>
>
>
> > To: nanog () nanog org
> > Subject: Re: Is Cisco equpiment de facto for you?
> > Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2011 10:36:24 -0600
> > CC: brandon.kim () brandontek com
> > From: tad1214 () gmail com
> >
> > On Mon, 10 Jan 2011 09:31:32 -0600, Brandon Kim
> > <brandon.kim () brandontek com> wrote:
> >
> > > Hello gents:
> > >
> > > I wanted to put this out there for all of you. Our network consists of a
> > > mixture of Cisco and Extreme equipment.
> > >
> > > Would you say that it's fair to say that if you are serious at all about
> > > being a service provider that your core equipment is Cisco based?
> > >
> > > Am I limiting myself by thinking that Cisco is the "de facto" vendor of
> > > choice? I'm not looking for so much "fanboy" responses, but more of a
> > > real world
> > > experience of what you guys use that actually work and does the job.....
> > >
> > > No technical questions here, just general feedback. I try to follow the
> > > Tolly Group who compares products, and they continually show that Cisco
> > > equipment
> > > is a poor performer in almost any equipment compared to others, I find
> > > that so hard to believe.....
> >
> > Cisco is typically not known as the fastest or most power efficient when
> > compared to other vendors, but they usually have some advanced feature
> > sets that are very nice. In the ISP space this may be less helpful, but in
> > the SMB and Enterprise space this can be very helpful. Things such as Call
> > Manager Express, Web Content Filtering, WebEx Nodes, Server Load
> > Balancing, Wireless Lan Controllers, etc. that are either built into IOS
> > or available with a line card or module, are nice tools to have at your
> > disposal, and often can mean reducing the number of devices you need in
> > your rack.
> >
> > As of the Tolly group, I find whomever pays Tolly for the survey tends to
> > be the fastest.
> >
> > Example:
> > Abstract:
> >
> > HP commissioned Tolly to evaluate the performance, power consumption and
> > TCO of its E5400 zl and E8200 switch series and compare those systems with
> > the Cisco Systems Catalyst 3750-X and Catalyst 4500.
> >
> > This is because the Vendor is getting to pick what they want to benchmark
> > rather than the company benchmarking them. No one is going to choose tests
> > that their product will lose in. There isn't much in the way of "Tom's
> > Hardware Style" testing of enterprise gear to my knowledge.
> >
> > Cisco gear is also known for long life, being very consistent, and high
> > reliability. A walk through colos you will often see many many Cisco
> > 12000's for those exact reasons.
> >
> > I feel each vendor has its strong points, price/performance may not be
> > Cisco's but Cisco's ease of configuration and feature sets, along with
> > reliability are definitely notable.
> >
> > -=Tom
> >
> > > Thanks!
> > >
> > > Brandon
> >
> >
> > --
> > Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/


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