Is Cisco equpiment de facto for you?

Mon Jan 10 19:35:36 UTC 2011

There have been awfully too many time when Cisco TAC would just say that
since the problem you are trying to troubleshoot is between Cisco and
VendorX, we can't help you. You should have bought Cisco for both sides.
I had that happen when I was troubleshooting LLDP between 3750s and Avaya
phones, TACACS between Cisco and tac_plus daemon, link bundling between
juniper EX and Cisco, some obscure switching issues between CAT and
Procurves and other examples like that just don't recall them anymore.

Every time I'm reminded that if you have a lot of Cisco on the network, the
rest should be cisco too, unless there is a very good technical/financial
reason for it, but you should be prepared to be your own help in those
cases.

Vendors love to point at the other vendors for solutions. At least in my
experience.

My $0.02

Andrey

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:52 AM, Greg Whynott <Greg.Whynott at oicr.on.ca>wrote:

> I've tried to use other vendors threw out the years for internal L2/L3.
>  Always Cisco for perimeter routing/firewalling.
>
> from my personal experience,  each time we took a chance and tried to use
> another vendor for internal L2 needs,  we would be reminded why it was a bad
> choice down the road,  due to hardware reliability,  support issues,
>  multiple and ongoing software bugs,  architectural design choices.  Then
> for the next few years I'd regret the decision.     This is not to say Cisco
> gear has been without its issues,  but they are much fewer and handled
> better when stuff hits the fan.
>
> the only other vendor at this point in my career I'd fee comfortable
> deploying for internal enterprise switching,  including HPC requirements
> which is not CIsco branded,  would be Force10 or Extreme.  it has always
> been Cisco for edge routing/firewalling,  but i wouldn't be opposed to
> trying Juniper for routing,  I know of a few shops who do and they have been
> pleased thus far.    I've little or no experience  with many of the other
> vendors,  and I'm sure they have good offerings,  but I won't be beta
> testing their firmwares anymore (one vendor insisted we upgrade our firmware
> on our core equipment several times in one year…).
>
>
> Cisco isn't a good choice if you don't have the budget for the smart net
> contracts.   They come at a price.   a little 5505 with unrestricted license
> and contract costs over 2k,  a 5540 about 40k-70k depending on options,
>  with a yearly renewal of about 15k or more…
>
> -g
>
>
>
-- 
Andrey Khomyakov
[khomyakov.andrey at gmail.com]