Benefits (and Detriments) of Standardizing Network Equipment in a Global Organization

Wed Dec 28 20:36:46 UTC 2016

On Wed, Dec 28, 2016 at 1:39 PM, Chris Grundemann <cgrundemann at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 27, 2016 at 3:10 PM, Leo Bicknell <bicknell at ufp.org> wrote:
>
> > 2 Vendor
> >
> > Can be implemented multiple ways, for instance 1 vendor per site
> > alternating sites, or gear deployed in pairs with one from each vendor
> > up and down the stack.
> >
>
> An alternative multi-vendor approach is to use 1 vendor per stack layer,
> but alternate layer to layer. That is; Vendor A edge router, Vendor B
> firewall, Vendor A/C switches, Vendor D anti-SPAM software, etc. This
> doesn't address the bug impact issue as well as it alleviates the vendor
> "ownership" issue though...
>

It also doesn't get you to a place where you can 'require' similar
functionality between vendors at each layer... you MAY (if not careful) get
locked into a particular vendor at one/some levels of the stack ;( (which
you noted as a problem still) if you choose poorly on 'features used'
(oops! I love me some eigrp... crap)

-chris