Force10 Gear - Opinions

Mon Aug 25 23:20:01 UTC 2008

On Aug 23, 2008, at 10:52 PM, Paul Wall wrote:
> EANTC did a comprehensive study of the E-series:
>
> http://www.eantc.de/en/test_reports_presentations/test_reports/force_10_sfm_failover_video_ftos_6211.html
>
> http://www.eantc.com/fileadmin/eantc/downloads/test_reports/2006-2008/Cisco-Force10/EANTC_Full_Report.pdf
>
> http://www.eantc.com/fileadmin/eantc/downloads/test_reports/2006-2008/Cisco-Force10/Section_8.pdf

Did you read these?  They appear to be nonsense.  They were bought and  
paid for by Cisco, and including nonsense things like "if you leave a  
slot open the chassis will burn up" as a decrement, which is also true  
in pretty much every big iron vendor.  They also deliberately detuned  
the force10 configuration.  They re-ran the tests using the  
recommended configuration and got very different numbers -- which you  
can request from them, but they won't publish on the website.

I'm not trying to be a Force10 advocate here (although I like their  
stuff) so much as trying to point at an incredibly biased and non- 
vendor-neutral report.  It is entirely funny the amount they tried to  
make nonsensical stuff sound important.

> Comparing list pricing, it looks like Force 10 would have you pay more
> for less features.

Based on what?  For E and C series boxes, Cisco is never cheaper.  S- 
series are a different story.

> As a box designed with the enterprise datacenter in mind, the E-series
> looks to be missing several key service provider features, including
> MPLS and advanced control plane filtering/policing.

Ah, because Cisco does either of these in hardware?

-- 
Jo Rhett
Net Consonance : consonant endings by net philanthropy, open source  
and other randomness