Cisco as Big Brother (Was Re: Cisco's AIP vs HSSI)

Wed Oct 16 12:33:50 UTC 1996

>   I like cisco too, but I'd really prefer that Bay, 3Com, or Netstar
>   were on par w/ cisco and forced them to do things better.  As it
>   is, they seem to stagnate from lack of competition...

Yes.  This is key.

Give me something with a command line interface; as many options for
controlling OSPF and BGP; completely interoperable OSPF and BGP w/
Ciscos, using the same algorithms for route selection; and I'll consider
it and perhaps buy some.

It's a catch-22, but few (esp. large) providers have the engineering time
to set up a separate backbone and slow-migrate customers over to another
backbone based on different routers/router technology (hi, Curtis).  As
a result, they stay locked in to Ciscos - with their admitted and perceived
problems.

>   -alan

Avi