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

Thu Dec 29 18:22:28 UTC 2016

On Thu, 29 Dec 2016 07:44:45 -0800, Leo Bicknell said:

> But I think the question others are trying to ask is a different
> hyptothetical.  Say there are two vendors, of of which makes perfectly
> good edge routers and core routers.  What are the pros to buying all
> of the edge from one, and all of the core from the other?

The *original* question, which seems to have gotten lost, was:

Say you're doing business in 100 countries, with some stated level of
possible autonomy for each business unit.

Is it better for upper corporate to say "all 100 national business units
will use vendor A for edge devices and vendor B for routing", or "all 100
business units shall choose, based on local conditions such as vendor
support, a standard set of vendors for their operations"?

Stated differently, "Which causes more trouble - a mix of Vendor A in
Denmark talking to Vendor B in Finland, or corporate mandating the use
of Vendor Q even if Q doesn't have a support office in Kazakhstan while
vendor F has an office in the building next door"?
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 484 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20161229/386f0d4d/attachment.sig>