tubbynet
reminds me of the danse russe
Premium
join:2008-01-16
Chandler, AZ
 ·Cox HSI
 ·Callcentric
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
 ·FrontierNet Intern..
| reply to Frank
Re: Google routers
said by Frank  :I dont know, I really cant picture a standard atx pc being capable of handling routing and switching for multiple oc-48s. qft!
many people want to hype the "open source" product lines. while i agree that on the consumer level, a cisco router is very overkill (though i have a 2811 at home) and is beyond the pricing ability of many people.
however, don't for one second think that google (in their core backbone) is using anything less than a juniper erx (which i believe is equivalent to a cisco gsr/asr). these routers *cannot* be beaten by a simple pc or even server class hardware.
moreover, the reason those cisco or juniper devices are expensive is the modularity. as Frank pointed out, i'd be curious to see multiple sonet links be routed through a typical x86 architecture. hell, i'd like to see the price point of a sonet card capable of oc-48 that could be slapped inside anything with x86 architecture.
q. |
|
bky
moof moof
Premium
join:2002-07-05
Austin, TX
| said by tubbynet :moreover, the reason those cisco or juniper devices are expensive is the modularity. The reason they are expensive is because of the name and their ability to sit and spin gold for providers, it's not the hardware. Cisco is a software company, so is Google. You tell me which one you think is better. |
|
N3OGH
Bear patrol must be working like a charm
Premium
join:2003-11-11
Philly burbs
 ·Verizon FIOS
·Verizon Online DSL
| reply to tubbynet
OK, you just blew me out of the water with that one.
erx
gsr/asr
multiple sonet links
oc-48
Just tell me one thing. IS THE FLUX CAPACITOR FLUXING??? 
--
Petty people are disproportionably corrupted by petty power… |
|
tubbynet
reminds me of the danse russe
Premium
join:2008-01-16
Chandler, AZ
·Cox HSI
·Callcentric
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·FrontierNet Intern..
| reply to bky
said by bky :The reason they are expensive is because of the name and their ability to sit and spin gold for providers, it's not the hardware. Cisco is a software company, so is Google. You tell me which one you think is better. no - cisco is *not* just a software designer. no other provider (outside of juniper) offer such flexibility and modularity in devices.
having toured the r&d department for some of the routing and switching fabric, i've seen what they do to test and retest their hardware between shock, rf, dust, etc. they stand behind their repuatation and what they make is *quality* gear.
i've seen their gear take heat, dust, shock, and years of sitting in a wall passing packets. the reason they make their gear expensive because they stand behind and make sure that their gear is as good as possible for the end customer.
(a) i'd love to see any x86 pc sit in a rack for years and just pass packets without failure.
(b) what would be the cost of your x86 box if it *had* the ability to handle high speed sonet links? can youx x86 pc handle 96 ports of gig poe copper, an fwsm firewall module, and a wism for wireless control? my cisco 6509 can and not even even blink. |
|
tubbynet
reminds me of the danse russe
Premium
join:2008-01-16
Chandler, AZ
·Cox HSI
·Callcentric
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·FrontierNet Intern..
1 edit | reply to N3OGH
said by N3OGH :Just tell me one thing. IS THE FLUX CAPACITOR FLUXING??? only on the weekends. it brings down the network and people complain if they can't get their e-mail or their pr0n while at work.
q. |
|
DarkLogix
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX
·Comcast Workplace
·Comcast
| reply to bky
Cisco easy
and cisco is more than a software company the hardware isn't some generic just its purpose built
and if you compair cisco to a software router with heavy testing you'll see butI doubt you could afford a 3845 or a 7613 for that matter
ya a lot of prople will come around and say hay this free software can beat such and such but if put to a real test then its not as likely as you think
and just try finding a PC that can even handle an OC-48 let alone a OC-768 and even less the 100Gbit fiber thats coming
it just woun't be able to so the software routers can't compete with the likes of the 7613 or the CRS-1 |
|
bky
moof moof
Premium
join:2002-07-05
Austin, TX
| reply to tubbynet
Cisco is primarily a software company, NOT a hardware company. Ask any Cisco employee or reseller how much money they profit from selling the hardware alone. Cisco makes money from contracts (read SMARTnet) and software licensing. You are telling me that $60K justifies the manufacturing costs for a Cisco ASA 5550 with SSL VPN capabilities or $30K for a 6500 8-port gigabit switch module. If you really believe that you're smoking bad crack.
It's ALL marketing. Cisco has the staple because they got there first. While many companies don't have the cash or power to enter that arena, Google could if they wanted. The hardware could be (and is) made by anyone and re-branded. In fact, Cisco uses ghost manufacturers to produce most (if not all) of the gear they sell anyway. |
|
tubbynet
reminds me of the danse russe
Premium
join:2008-01-16
Chandler, AZ
·Cox HSI
·Callcentric
·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·FrontierNet Intern..
| said by bky :Ask any Cisco employee or reseller i am
said by bky :You are telling me that $60K justifies the manufacturing costs for a Cisco ASA 5550 with SSL VPN capabilities or $30K for a 6500 8-port gigabit switch module have you *seen* the testing that goes into one of those things? do you know the man-hours of r&d that go into one of those devices? sure, they do offer support in smartnet. sure, it is expensive to maintain said service contracts. have you ever had to use a smartnet for hardware repairs? i've had a *generic* hardware support contract give me a device the next day to replace my broken one. i'm sorry, if i (or any of my customers) are paying for this support, then i will take it.
how is this any different than a provider charging you thousdand plus per month for a t1 line? it goes for support, overhead, etc.
said by bky :It's ALL marketing. so is everything else. cisco is no different.
said by bky :Cisco has the staple because they got there first and you don't think that it is because that they make good quality devices? what about kay-pro computers, or commodore? they were here first too, but have they survived? they either died or were bought out.
said by bky :In fact, Cisco uses ghost manufacturers to produce most (if not all) of the gear they sell anyway they may contract out for the actual assembly once the design is done, but what do you think about the r&d and design?
who actually manufactures their own stuff anymore? once the design is setup, contract out your specs and go.
said by bky :If you really believe that you're smoking bad crack nah, i make my own. higher quality
q. |
|
jhboricua
ExMod 2000-01
join:2000-06-06
Minneapolis, MN
clubs:
1 edit | reply to DarkLogix
said by DarkLogix :Cisco easy and cisco is more than a software company the hardware isn't some generic just its purpose built If you look at the 2 studies by the Tolly Group I linked you'll see that the commodity hardware used on the Vyatta platform was faster routing packets, had more capacity for holding BGP routes and was faster converging them by a substantial margin compared to the Cisco hardware it ran against. Cisco would like you to believe that purpose built hardware is better in all scenarios but that's a lie. It sure give's them some hefty profit margins from those who believe that crap.
said by DarkLogix :and if you compair cisco to a software router with heavy testing you'll see butI doubt you could afford a 3845 or a 7613 for that matter ya a lot of prople will come around and say hay this free software can beat such and such but if put to a real test then its not as likely as you think That's exactly what Tolly did, and their results indicate otherwise. A little over $7k+ Vyatta platform soundly out-performing an over 30k+ Cisco router. You should at least backup your statements.
said by DarkLogix :and just try finding a PC that can even handle an OC-48 let alone a OC-768 and even less the 100Gbit fiber thats coming it just woun't be able to so the software routers can't compete with the likes of the 7613 or the CRS-1 Where is this assumption that a PC based router is not able to handle a OC48 coming from? Just curious, honestly, since I've seen this claim repeated several times on this thread. I can see how the old PCI-X bus could limit a server PC hardware-wise but with the bandwidth available on the PCIe bus, and 10G cards readily available, what's the limiting factor? Can you cite any studies that have been made or is this just another assumption on your part? |
|
deepblackmag
join:2004-12-27
00000
| By all means build an open source competitor to the cisco nexus datacenter switches. The 7018s have 18 slots. that means 16 slots of 32port 10gigabit ethernet linecards connected with a monsterous switch fabric with day ultimate capability of 15terabits per second. The new hardware is beyond compare from the x86 space. Same holds true for the CRS-1 and GSR routing platforms. Those Vyatta "studies" compare modern dual xeons with ancient 7200s. Congradulations on comparing apples to oranges but try to hold a flame to some of the new monster equipment.
There is alot more than simply passing packets to contend with here too. All the security, QOS, and integrated functionality that comes with the IOS or IOS-XR or IOS-XE or NXOS or ASA OS... yah cisco is #1 for a reason. (except in firewall space.. that juniper SRX 100gbps firewall is just a monster and the ASAs or FWSMs cant compete with that kind of thing lol) You would be writing software for decades to try and make a linux box do half the things my little 7200 do. |
|
N3OGH
Bear patrol must be working like a charm
Premium
join:2003-11-11
Philly burbs | reply to tubbynet
LOL |
|
whosmatt
join:2005-02-28
Raleigh, NC
| reply to deepblackmag
Well said, and I agree.
I think some of the posters were trying to compare cisco's popular security devices with specialized routing / firewall distributions (pfsense FTW!). Both the PIX series and the ASA series do indeed use x86 hardware.
Even top of the line ASA (which uses a Linux kernel) is an 8-core Opteron box.
So that's probably the closest (and most fair) comparison that can be made. |
|
jhboricua
ExMod 2000-01
join:2000-06-06
Minneapolis, MN
clubs:
| reply to deepblackmag
said by deepblackmag :Those Vyatta "studies" compare modern dual xeons with ancient 7200s. Congradulations on comparing apples to oranges but try to hold a flame to some of the new monster equipment. Its funny that you quote the word 'studies' as to imply they are deceptive. I guess your Cisco fanboyism is getting in the way of your objectivity. At the time of the study, Cisco was still selling this so called 'ancient' 7204 at over 30k+ with the tested configuration, it was not in end of life status either. Claiming its an apples to oranges comparison seems like excuses to me. Then again, a $30k device losing to a $7k device does seems unfair to whoever bought the higher costing device.
said by deepblackmag :You would be writing software for decades to try and make a linux box do half the things my little 7200 do. Apparently I was right about the Cisco fanboyism part, that was a ridiculous statement.
In the high end segments Cisco and Juniper are king for sure, but as I've said before, thats a niche market, much like the high-computing market dominated mostly by 3 vendors (IBM PowerPC, Intel Itanium and Sun UltraSparc). For the vast majority of businesses that don't have these massive traffic requirements, there are much better alternatives than Cisco.
--
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." - Albert Einstein
Jose A. Hernandez * System Admin * MPLS, Minnesota, USA * |
|
deepblackmag
join:2004-12-27
00000
| Ill be waiting for callmanager capability with NAC for my x86 hardware. Let me know when you have managed to integrate a complete voip solution and security services into a medium business router. (and im not talking about a hokey asterisks install with SNORT running)
Glad to know my zealotry comes through, sometimes i wonder if people understand the depths to which i hate walking into an office and seeing a sonicwall or PC in the corner "running the network".
True career network engineers will understand and appreciate the functionality provided by real enterprise class network gear. Anyone arguing linux as a serious integrated services router replacement is clearly not functioning in the capacity of engineering or operations for a complex global network with drasticly varying requirements. Cisco even with its exorbinant cost saves boatloads of money for most companies when it comes time to scale up or add capabilities to a network. Solving problems on cisco is easy because if it can be done, there is a fairly uniform way to do it where as on linux every solution has to be custom engineered (or copied from a poorly written howto guide). That kind of operational complexity isnt acceptable today, im not just managing a dozen network devices.
Need a gre tunnel? OK!
cisco> int tun105
ip add x.y.z.q
tun source X
tun dest Y
and add a tunnel protect statement to integrate crypto... look at that, im done in under 3 minutes with both sides up and pinging and routing exchanged dynamicly!
Linux> recompile the kernel or load a module to support gre, do the same for IPSEC, manually configure the routing, forget about simple crypto-maps and compile then configure 3 daemons to handle services such as IKE. Spend time researching what app to use and then version that supports the featuers you need and arent broken in release -STABLE thats never quite stable enough... Dont bother trying to do any kind of unequal cost load sharing because linux doesnt run EIGRP as most enterprise networks do... and all for the scant cost of 10 hours of my time. |
|
