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<DIV><FONT face="Courier New" color=#000000>These responses
capture the essence of the messages that I received on the topic. Thanks
for all your input.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT color=#000000><FONT face="Courier New">"If your looking for big dumb
cheap devices to just move data around a</FONT><FONT face="Courier New"> <TT>big
switched network, 3com is your vendor. If you plan on doing</TT></FONT><FONT
face="Courier New"> <BR><TT>anything fancier than SNMP, best look
elsewhere.</TT> "</FONT></FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face="Courier New">"<TT>I worked with 7700 and 7700Rs, along with the
new 3xxx series, and</TT> <BR><TT>all I can say summarizes to simple: don't do
it. There is Cisco,</TT> <BR><TT>Enterasys, Allied Telesyn, but 3COM is just
tumbling down.</TT> </FONT>
<P><TT>Line cards for 7700 are seriously limited in functionality,
current</TT><FONT face="Courier New"> <BR><TT>Supervisor can't do wire (8Gbit/s
FD) duplex on all cards simultaneusly,</TT> <BR><TT>and the 7700R marketed "few
seconds failover" goes up to 5-6 minutes</TT> <BR><TT>which is actually longer
than booting the switch from cold dead state.</TT> </FONT></P>
<P><TT>The BGP sucks, and OSPF sucks even more (it can kill whole switch
in</TT><FONT face="Courier New"> <BR><TT>certain situations I can't speak of at
the moment).</TT> </FONT></P>
<P><TT>Same thing is with the routers - 3000 and 5000 suck, the 6000
suck</TT><FONT face="Courier New"> <BR><TT>even more (1 ATM OC3 interface with
30Mbit/s worth of traffic</TT> <BR><TT>generates 85% of CPU load on 6080 and
router begins to drop traffic..."</TT></FONT></P>
<P><TT>--------------------^ This guy went and bought C gear.</TT></P>
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<P><TT>"<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12px"><FONT size=3>Well, they aren’t service
provider switches – they are enterprise focused, and have a very iffy SP feature
set. They are also Huwei boxes, rebadged. This means they may (or may not)
possess stolen intellectual property. "</FONT></SPAN></TT></P>
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