I’m not sure if this is the right place for this discussion but I can’t think of anywhere better to ask.
Has anyone seen any progress whatsoever on supply chain issues with networking hardware?
I’ve noticed that primary market lead times have been increasing and at the same time secondary market pricing has also been going higher at the same time, still.
What have you seen?
Basically, anything that uses Broadcom or other commodity silicon is currently 55+ weeks out according to most of the vendors I work with. Custom Silicon is a bit better or so I’m told, but I’ve not had to order much gear with custom silicon lately, so I’ve not got a clear read on lead times there.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see some recent gear go End of Sales early just because of component shortages and fabs moving to produce the more in-demand parts over older less profitable parts.
A company I work for designs a lot of our own hardware and we’ve had a number of critical components go EOL suddenly and without warning, such as FPGAs, ADCs, clock generators, and SOMs just to name a few. Just a few weeks ago we were informed that a large order of FPGAs was not going to be filled at all and the order was cancelled. Of the parts that aren’t EOL (yet), many have 52-week lead times which is just a place holder for “we have no idea when we’ll get these” and not an actual delivery estimate. Older product lines and lower volume product lines are being cancelled. We had an ADC go EOL because the only factory in Japan making this part burned down so not necessarily related to what we think of as supply chain issues, but it is of a different sort.
I bought (3) MX204’s 10/2021 and received them 2/2022 so about 5 months to receive those. Also received a couple SRX300’s in that same purchase.
I’ll add that I can’t say the same for the other stuff I also ordered 10/2021…
MX480
MX240
MPC10E-10C
…which is due in around 5/2022. So about 8 months for that stuff, but, actually remains to be seen because we still haven’t got it yet.
-Aaron
Nope.
Personally speaking I'm struggling on everything from simple Intel network cards to half-decent switches.
On the grapevine, I am hearing the same. I was, for example, talking to a rep from $major_IX ... he said they've got more than one customer with pending port connections due to lack of kit, and one customer told him some router card was not due til Q1 2023.
I think the reality is it's going to get bad before it gets better. There's probably an almighty backlog that needs to be processed before new orders reach the front of the queue.
On another grapevine I've heard the situation is, shall we say, not helped by the hyperscalers. The hyperscalers are (allegedly) queue jumping using hard $$$ ... i.e. saying to vendors "I'll give you this chunky order in return for a place higher up the queue". Vendors of course being vain beasts who don't care for much apart from next quarter's financial results are (allegedly) lapping up the "free" money.
Anecdotally, I had a pair of Nexus 93180s that I ordered in May 2021 show up in February 2022, so 9 months. The estimated ship date got punted several times (probably due to being preempted by folks employing the approach Laura outlined 
).
I haven't ordered anything since then, but I understand that 4-8 months isn't unexpected, still.
- Jima
There's some queue-jumping happening for other reasons -
medical/hospital a significant portion of that - but even there I'm
hearing 6+ months for some switch hardware and Cisco APs are pretty
uniformly "if you didn't order before March, you won't see them for
over a year".
Go virtual. x86 servers are still 5-8 weeks from our usual suppliers, although some NICs are 12 weeks and DC Power Supplies are also 52-weeks/‘no-idea’.
so i am chatting with the volvo mechanic this morning. he said that 25
years ago volvo had essentially two engines, carb and fuel injection.
from the late '90s on, the variations grew; and the parts and tools one
needed exploded.
he started feeling supply chain issues early. and now the number of
variations being designed is narrowing again.
i suspect that, in years of overabundant late stage capitalism, folk
went nuts. and we are now paying for it. one of my fave quotes
I thought of it in a slightly different way--like a space that we
were exploring and, in the early days, we figured out this
consistent path through the space: IP, TCP, and so on. What's been
happening over the last few years is that the IETF is filling the
rest of the space with every alternative approach, not necessarily
any better. Every possible alternative is now being written down.
And it's not useful. -- Jon Postel
randy
Who are you buying servers from, because I’m going on a year waiting on servers from HPE, and about 6 months on servers from Dell, although that may have to do with the types of NICs I need.
I’m told HPE is holding back capacity for some of their large “Government” contracts which have stiff performance penalties.
For the last year and a half, I have been working on fitting out a $20 Million dollar telco network lab (x86 and network gear), and while I work for a VERY LARGE company, we can’t even get escalations with the vendors. In fact about 6 months ago, we were told that Juniper, Cisco and HPE all stopped accepting VP level escalations, which can normally get you ahead of the line.
Juniper has definitely been the worst in terms of delivery, I have equipment from them which was ordered last March and has delivery dates as far out as September.
I tried to order a pair of AC power supplies for a Nexus 9K last week and was told delivery was quoted as 55 weeks, so maybe Cisco is no better.
About a month ago, I had a quote from Extreme Networks for a pair of 1G switches, and before I could submit the order, they came back and raised the price almost 20%, so it seems some vendors may be trying to reduce demand by increasing prices.
And don’t even try to order an ACC100 Accelerator card, many vendors have simply stopped accepting orders.
It is definitely going to get worse before it gets better.
Shane
Ordered a pair of ASR9906s in Jan 2022 with delivery Aug 2022.
-Hank
Randy Bush wrote:
i suspect that, in years of overabundant late stage capitalism, folk
went nuts. and we are now paying for it. one of my fave quotesI thought of it in a slightly different way--like a space that we
were exploring and, in the early days, we figured out this
consistent path through the space: IP, TCP, and so on. What's been
happening over the last few years is that the IETF is filling the
rest of the space with every alternative approach, not necessarily
any better. Every possible alternative is now being written down.
And it's not useful. -- Jon Postel
And Steve Deering agreed with Jon saying "Exactly".
That's so funny because the statement was published in Oct. 1998
and the first rfc on IPv6 was published in Dec. 1995.
Masataka Ohta
I happen to have a few MX204’s (some MX204 “old version” and some MX204-HW-BASE left. In case anyone is interested please contact me directly.
Cheers,
Greg
As I've been saying for a while, instead of buying new kit, perhaps we
could spend some time on getting better software onto our older kit?
Getting stuff to multiplex better, be more reliable, last longer?
It isn't just me wanting to upgrade a billion+ routers with existing
crappy software to openwrt, is it?
I’d bet it’s cheaper and easier to quantify new hardware than software. Labor was super expensive and now it is ready to implode.
As someone who works within the "secondary market" for networking hardware, there is a ton of demand spilling over into the "pre-owned/vendor refurbished" market.
I just wish there were people putting in a value-add, like reflashing
with better software, first.
Who’s going to support that reflashed device? Certainly not the OEM vendor.
As someone who works within the “secondary market” for networking hardware, there is a ton of demand spilling over into the “pre-owned/vendor refurbished” market.
Market prices on pre-owned equipment are rapidly increasing in step with increased demand and dwindling supply.
Market prices on 1G - 10G switching products, wireless infrastructure devices, etc have been rising precipitously. Even semi “legacy” stuff going back 2-3 generations (EOL/EOS) from current gen have doubled, tripled, even quadrupled in price.
I’ve been involved in the hardware business for 20 years and the current market landscape is unprecedented.
Cory J. Andrews
Who's going to support that reflashed device? Certainly not the OEM vendor.
The oem ain't gonna support the resold device either.
Yes, arguably, someone or someones doing a value add would have to be
making money at it somehow.
However, at least in my world, volunteers make the world round, still.
It would kind of suck,
I suppose, if someone unleashed a few hundred thousand reflashed
routers like the TIP openwifi
effort ( https://telecominfraproject.com/ ) seem to intent on doing...
... but if the OS is good enough to not need support, the impact is minimal.
The oem ain’t gonna support the resold device either.
Many vendors support resold gear through a recertification cost in order to bring it back under a support contract.