[134730] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Is Cisco equpiment de facto for you?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Whynott)
Mon Jan 10 12:30:27 2011
From: Greg Whynott <Greg.Whynott@oicr.on.ca>
To: Brandon Kim <brandon.kim@brandontek.com>
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2011 12:29:39 -0500
In-Reply-To: <BLU158-w603EBE410E837DA830AADEDC0E0@phx.gbl>
Cc: nanog group <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
the pro curve line is cheap and the standard support contract price can't b=
e beat (life time free). For many ' normal ' deployments it would be a go=
od 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 tho=
se needing highly redundant / quick fail over, VSS. Currently you can on=
ly 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 pai=
r 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 featu=
re 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 of=
ten 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 t=
o Juniper from Cisco.
>
> I am a bit biased because I have spent an awful amount of time invested i=
nto 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 w=
ill stay objective as much as I can.
>
> =3D)
>
>
>
>
>> 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 abou=
t
>>> 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 Ca=
ll
>> 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 t=
o
>> 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 wi=
th
>> the Cisco Systems Catalyst 3750-X and Catalyst 4500.
>>
>> This is because the Vendor is getting to pick what they want to benchmar=
k
>> rather than the company benchmarking them. No one is going to choose tes=
ts
>> 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.
>>
>> -=3DTom
>>
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> Brandon
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/
>
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