Zebra/linux device production networking? (summary)

Wed Jun 7 17:34:26 UTC 2006

Thanks to all for all the feedback!

It seems what a lot of people are saying is that it's almost acceptable 
(in that, you shouldn't if you can afford other devices), given the 
right time and engineering. The cost of supporting seems to be 
unanimously higher then going with a specific vendor.

A number of people have noted that some of the support that the various 
packages of software for handling routing protocols may not play 
correctly with the os layer or even other packages. (IE: routing)

I've seen confliction on if *bsd or linux is better, this (hopefully) 
isn't that surprising to anyone.

The consensus is that when something breaks it takes longer to fix and 
requires greater technical aptitude.

Finally, it appears as if, contrary to what the articles are saying, not 
many people are actively considering such a move. However, it is more 
common in smaller businesses starting new locations or building out.

A lot of people seemed to of assumed the absolute worse case (which, 
might I add, is generally what I was looking for) scenario:

a dusty box with interesting hardware
out-of-the-box kernel
no research
a MSMD approach

What about better case situations?* IE:

toe cards
custom kernel
no moving parts (ie: hard drive, maybe fans if possible)
up-to-date software packages with internal coders to fix ugly bugs, etc
actual research into what packages & hardware would be best

*This deviates from operational and gets into the more technical issues, 
so it's actually a not a question I'm looking for you kind folks to 
answer. But I feel I have to vindicate myself a little bit as my 
technical skills were called into question for even posting the original 
email... ;)

Once again, thanks everyone!