[179795] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Huawei and ZTE Routers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Daniel Corbe)
Thu May 7 14:25:32 2015
X-Original-To: nanog@nanog.org
From: Daniel Corbe <corbe@corbe.net>
To: Colton Conor <colton.conor@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 07 May 2015 14:25:26 -0400
In-Reply-To: <CAMDdSzP=s9p+xPPejx5-e2kBsGkPSqxM2KXres6+Z1vPKP9A+A@mail.gmail.com>
(Colton Conor's message of "Thu, 7 May 2015 12:55:17 -0500")
Cc: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
Colton Conor <colton.conor@gmail.com> writes:
> The other thread about the Alcatel-Lucent routers has been pleasantly
> delightful. Our organization used to believe that Juniper, Cisco, and
> Brocade were the only true vendors for carrier grade routing, but now we
> are going to throw Alcatel-Lucent into the mix.
>
> ZTE and Huawei, the big chinese vendors, have also been mentioned to us. I
> know there are large national security issues with using these vendors in
> the US, but I know Level3 and other large American vendors use Huawei and
> ZTE in their networks.
>
> How do their products perform? How are they compared to Cisco and Juniper
> on the performance side of the house? Is their pricing really half or less
> of that of Cisco and Juniper? Is it worth using these vendors or not worth
> the hassle?
I don't know much about Huawei but be wary of ZTE's claims. They love
their vendor lock-in. They have a bad habit of giving away hardware for
next to nothing and then ratcheting up support costs.
Opex needs to be a consideration when selecting an equipment vendor as
well as capex.
