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SLD
Premium Member
join:2002-04-17
San Francisco, CA

SLD to tubbynet

Premium Member

to tubbynet

Re: End users are idiots??

Frankley, Cisco is pretty crappy compared to the available options. It may work as well, but it is harder to configure and costs much more. I've been using 3Com switches in the Datacenter and they run circles around Cisco if you consider price and ease of use.

tubbynet
reminds me of the danse russe
MVM
join:2008-01-16
Gilbert, AZ

1 recommendation

tubbynet

MVM

said by SLD:

Frankley, Cisco is pretty crappy compared to the available options. It may work as well, but it is harder to configure and costs much more. I've been using 3Com switches in the Datacenter and they run circles around Cisco if you consider price and ease of use.
poh-tay-toe, poh-tah-toe.
i'm glad 3com works for you.

sure -- ios isn't menu driven. thats what makes it powerful, and when you use monolithic ios, your commands are the same on the 871 as they are on cat6500s. couple that with the flexibility of chassis like the 6500e, where you're able to run mixtures of copper blades, 10gig fiber blades, fwsm's for datacenter firewall contexts and ace modules for load balancing all in the same box -- you *can't* beat that. run two of those chassis in a vss and you've got distributed ha on your firewalls and loadbalancing. there is a reason cisco kit is always popular -- and its not just good marketing.

however, if you feel that you're better than anyone running cisco because you run "3com in your datacenter", i'm happy.

back to regularly scheduled discussion regarding *cisco*...

q.

SLD
Premium Member
join:2002-04-17
San Francisco, CA

SLD

Premium Member

I don't feel that I'm "better", I just pointed out that the myth that Cisco is the best way to go is false. BTW, the featues that you listed are available in my other vendor's equipment, including 3Com (HP now).

tubbynet
reminds me of the danse russe
MVM
join:2008-01-16
Gilbert, AZ

1 recommendation

tubbynet

MVM

said by SLD:

I don't feel that I'm "better", I just pointed out that the myth that Cisco is the best way to go is false. BTW, the featues that you listed are available in my other vendor's equipment, including 3Com (HP now).
thats great. many other manufacturers make such gear too (juniper, force10, brocade, etc.). the issue isn't always availability or price, but the level of support you can get, both directly from the manufacturer and through other outlets. cisco (due to its popularity) has support everywhere, from millions of configuration examples on the website, to knowledge base articles, to mailing lists, to random bloggers. thats not including tac support for when things really go pear shaped.

i am not any better than someone who uses brand "j" or brand "f" if they can use their preferred gear and make it do the same things. even better if they can do it for less work or less upfront gear cost. i know that there are several places that juniper has cisco beat *hands down* and have used j* gear to fill that need. part of being a *good* network engineer is knowing what works best for the situation you're in, being able to justify that business case (especially if it deviates from prior purchases) and then design the solution without any issues. the "myth" that cisco is better doesn't exist for people who are regularly in the design and testing phase of network deployment.
do i *prefer* cisco -- yes, its what i've been using and learning on for the better part of 8 years. do i critcize cisco for business decisions? sure. look at my posting history regarding linksys products, the new cisco licensing methods, as well as any number of rants/complaints i have about syntactical differences between minor code revisions or features appearing in a release (and being robust and stable) only to disappear in another release. no company is perfect and everyone has a personal choice. i've had bad experiences with procurve switches in the past and have tended to shy away from them. you make them work. in the end, we both win.

q.
ricep5
Premium Member
join:2000-08-07
Jacksonville, FL

ricep5

Premium Member

The Cisco vs the world argument is an old one.

Cisco bought Linksys to get into the SMB space, which Cisco had zero presence at the time.

The first attempt to monetize it was the "trade up" program where you would get a faux discount on a catalyst if an SMB dragged in their old Linksys gear. Not many takers on that one.

Second attempt was to increase brand recognition by placing the "Linksys by Cisco" label on the gear. Most buyers didn't care as long as it did what it was supposed to. The only oversight in this era was taking open source off the WRT54 and putting on VxWorks. Flop city.

Third attempt now is to rebrand Linksys gear in a different color and call it Valet. Like it will do everything for you. To me that is a consumer direction and leaving the SMB space.

Linksys used to try various market niches in the prosumer/SMB space often and early. They appear to be running second fiddle now and release competing product after their competitors.

There is nothing wrong with Cisco Corporate as hardware and the IOS goes, (except for some sales tactics) but their value equation doesn't fit in the SMB or emerging network market. Too many examples to list here.

On a funny note, back in the old days, I figured out how to silence a room full of Cisco reps who were feeling pretty good about themselves....I said that Intel was buying out Bay Networks. You could hear the clock on the wall ticking after that one.

Give Cisco credit, they keep trying, but they are too attached to the teat of monthly maintenance income, which SMB's avoid.

houkouonchi
join:2002-07-22
Ontario, CA

houkouonchi to SLD

Member

to SLD
said by SLD:

Frankley, Cisco is pretty crappy compared to the available options. It may work as well, but it is harder to configure and costs much more. I've been using 3Com switches in the Datacenter and they run circles around Cisco if you consider price and ease of use.
I have actually seen a lot of reports on the WHT (webhostingtalk.com) in the colo section that 3com switches have reliability problems (a lot of failures or bad ports). We used to use extreme switches way back when but now we only use cisco as they are the only ones that have proven to handle the load/beating we place on them.

SLD
Premium Member
join:2002-04-17
San Francisco, CA

SLD

Premium Member

That's a bummer. Maybe the luck is in the draw. I have a few that are serving over a Gigabit constant traffic for some high-ranking websites. Never saw a hitch. Some others that push about 300Mbit constant run great too.

houkouonchi
join:2002-07-22
Ontario, CA

houkouonchi

Member

said by SLD:

That's a bummer. Maybe the luck is in the draw. I have a few that are serving over a Gigabit constant traffic for some high-ranking websites. Never saw a hitch. Some others that push about 300Mbit constant run great too.
Although they can be proportional to each other they aren't always I heard the problem was the pps (not the bps).