Is Cisco equpiment de facto for you?

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1

Hello gents:

I wanted to put this out there for all of you. Our network consists of a mixture of Cisco and Extreme equipment.

Would you say that it's fair to say that if you are serious at all about being a service provider that your core equipment is Cisco based?

Am I limiting myself by thinking that Cisco is the "de facto" vendor of choice? I'm not looking for so much "fanboy" responses, but more of a real world
experience of what you guys use that actually work and does the job.....

No technical questions here, just general feedback. I try to follow the Tolly Group who compares products, and they continually show that Cisco equipment
is a poor performer in almost any equipment compared to others, I find that so hard to believe.....

Thanks!

Brandon

2

I would not necessarily say that. Granted, most of the places I've worked are Cisco shops to a large extent, that does not mean it is the only solution to many problems. There are product spaces where Cisco has a very well established presence (routers, switches, remote access, wireless, DWDM, IP telephony, etc), but there are other players in those spaces, in additional to spaces where Cisco does not have as large of a presence.

There are many people who will give 'buy Cisco' as a default answer to many networking needs, much the same as there are meny people who will give 'buy Microsoft' or 'buy Oracle' for software/database needs. There are other solutions to those needs. If you see a piece of gear from a new vendor, don't be afraid to contact them to see if get their sales team in to give you a presentation or take a box for a test drive. Ideally, you also have acess to some type of lab or non-production environment where you can try out equipment without putting 'live' data at risk.

In most shops I've worked in, the final decision comes down to:
1. cost
2. performance/reliability
3. support
4. scalability (read: investment protection, speaking back to point 1)
5. interoperability
6. security
7. environmental factors (rack space, power, cooling, etc)

Pretty much all of the subsequent points ties back to point 1 in some way.

Network devices are tools designed to do one or more jobs. The job you're trying to do determines the tools you use, and how you use them.

jms

PS: I take test results from Tolly/Gartner/Burton/etc with a grain of salt. When a vendor performs well in a bake-off, they will proudly trumpet that fact. When they don't they will usually claim that either the box they tested was broken, or the testing methodology was flawed in some way :slight_smile:

3

I think a lot of this depends on the market.

If you're into FTTH/FTTP then Cisco is not the way to go. They have no serious offerings in this space IMHO. (that are cost competitive).

Each vendor has various things they do well. Cisco surely is well capitalized with a broad portfolio of offerings in the DWDM to IP space.

I do believe they are the "IBM" of the industry, ie: "Nobody ever was fired for buying IBM(sic)".

This does not mean they (nor anyone else) delivers a perfect solution. This is a challenge that I frequently remind the vendors of, as apparently many customers actually do *yell* at them when there are bugs, vs offering constructive partnerships to resolve the issues.

I think that Juniper, Foundry(Brocade) and some other vendors offer compelling products in the core space as well. It's well worth its while to build a relationship with your vendors so you can have that constructive partnership IMHO. Then when you hit a serious problem, you can take constructive actions vs just screaming loudly and hoping they jump.

- Jared

4

You have to really narrow the network criteria. What's good for DSL subscriber termination with or without subscriber management features (on router, or handled externally), in core networks a t1/t3/oc3/gig-e/oc48/10G+ speeds, mpls features, etc.

The first kickoff on any network is if it is service provider or enterprise. The feature sets and types of boxes differ greatly between these for most manufacturers (as does price).

I've been happy with, and disappointed with, Cisco, Extreme, Juniper, and Brocade. There's a few others out there that I haven't used or tested.

In the Terabit market, I love Alcatel and Juniper, but I can't afford the terabit market. :slight_smile:

Jack

5

In my experience it all comes down to Cisco-certified people being
easy to find, and managers not wanting to spend all their time in the
hiring process. So yes, I've generally seen Cisco as the de-facto
choice, but it's rarely been a technical argument that swings the
balance. I'm generally playing in the Enterprise space now, though.

-saxon

6

Our core business is not as a service provider, as in selling services to
others, but we act as a service provider providing services for the various
customers in our internal network that we support.

Our core used to be an all Cisco Core. a few years back the decision was
made to replace this with Alcatel-Lucent IPD products. I can say we are
happy that we did replace the Cisco core, and we have had a very good
experience with the IPD product line. I am sure others can attest to this
also. The features and functionality along with the reliability have been
very good, and in my opinion they have a strong product.

Our edge at this point is a mixture of Cisco access switches, and we also
still have some Cisco Distribution.

7

Cisco shop here that is avidly converting to Juniper.....

Paul

8

We have traditionally been a Cisco shop, but we are starting to move toward Juniper for much of our needs, and will be recommending Juniper as an alternative for customers' needs. From a technical point of view, I find the configurations to be simpler and easier to understand, and I like the fact that most everything runs the same OS, with the same interface. From a financial point of view, Juniper tends to be less expensive for more performance, and their support contracts are much cheaper.

All that said, and as other's have said, Cisco is always a safe choice, particularly since many people are familiar with them.

-Randy

9

Hello gents:

I wanted to put this out there for all of you. Our network consists of a mixture of Cisco and Extreme equipment.

Would you say that it's fair to say that if you are serious at all about being a service provider that your core equipment is Cisco based?

Am I limiting myself by thinking that Cisco is the "de facto" vendor of choice? I'm not looking for so much "fanboy" responses, but more of a real world
experience of what you guys use that actually work and does the job.....

No technical questions here, just general feedback. I try to follow the Tolly Group who compares products, and they continually show that Cisco equipment
is a poor performer in almost any equipment compared to others, I find that so hard to believe.....

Cisco is typically not known as the fastest or most power efficient when compared to other vendors, but they usually have some advanced feature sets that are very nice. In the ISP space this may be less helpful, but in the SMB and Enterprise space this can be very helpful. Things such as Call Manager Express, Web Content Filtering, WebEx Nodes, Server Load Balancing, Wireless Lan Controllers, etc. that are either built into IOS or available with a line card or module, are nice tools to have at your disposal, and often can mean reducing the number of devices you need in your rack.

As of the Tolly group, I find whomever pays Tolly for the survey tends to be the fastest.

Example:
Abstract:

HP commissioned Tolly to evaluate the performance, power consumption and TCO of its E5400 zl and E8200 switch series and compare those systems with the Cisco Systems Catalyst 3750-X and Catalyst 4500.

This is because the Vendor is getting to pick what they want to benchmark rather than the company benchmarking them. No one is going to choose tests that their product will lose in. There isn't much in the way of "Tom's Hardware Style" testing of enterprise gear to my knowledge.

Cisco gear is also known for long life, being very consistent, and high reliability. A walk through colos you will often see many many Cisco 12000's for those exact reasons.

I feel each vendor has its strong points, price/performance may not be Cisco's but Cisco's ease of configuration and feature sets, along with reliability are definitely notable.

-=Tom

10

Just as a pointer - one of the largest and most utilized IX (AMS-IX) has their platform built on Brocade devices.

11

I've tried to use other vendors threw out the years for internal L2/L3. Always Cisco for perimeter routing/firewalling.

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

12

Brandon

Just as a pointer - one of the largest and most utilized IX (AMS-IX) has
their platform built on Brocade devices.

Brocade device's pre Foundry purchase correct? I can't see anyone that large using Foundry in large deployments..

-g

13

Wow, overall consensus is that there are quite a few that are migrating to Juniper from Cisco.

I am a bit biased because I have spent an awful amount of time invested into Cisco and understanding how to configure them.
But being a former business owner, I also am very much sensitive to costs and business needs.

For those that have been Cisco focused, do you stay fully objective, and are you willing to pitch another vendor knowing that you will
have to learn a new IOS? And that that will be your time that you'll have to spend to understand the product and support it?

We have been selling HP procurves to SMB's because of the cost factor. I don't really mind them all that much. I've tried to fit Cisco switches
in the mix but their pricing is just so much more as well as the smartnet costs. They really price themselves out and that is unfortunate.

I will be looking at refreshing our core switches and routers soon so I will stay objective as much as I can.

=)

14

I work at a multivendor shop - we're not afraid to work with other vendors' gear. There's a lot of Cisco here, but there is a lot of non-Cisco here too.

Core routing/switching: Cisco
Access switches: Cisco
Border routers: Juniper
Firewalls: Cisco/Fortinet
Load balancers: F5
Wireless: Cisco
IP Telephony: Avaya
SAN: Cisco/Brocade (I think - I don't touch the storage stuff too much :))
VPNs: Juniper/Fortinet/Cisco (depending on VPN type/application)
UPSs: Emerson(Liebert) and Eaton(Powerware)

jms

15

the pro curve line is cheap and the standard support contract price can't be beat (life time free). For many ' normal ' deployments it would be a good choice. in a 10Gbit HPC or highly redundant environment I'd probably be looking at Extreme or Force 10.

There is a feature on the Cisco 6500 series which is very appealing for those needing highly redundant / quick fail over, VSS. Currently you can only get it on 6500's or better, so the cost of admission is huge, and you have to have the physical space to mount the units. Extreme has a similar feature which is available threw out most of the product line, meaning you don't have to drop 6 figures for a redundant zero time fail over solution and can fit it into as little as 2Us in the rack. I recently set up a pair of Summit 650's using the virtual switch feature. I have multiple 10Gbit clients terminated to the pair. zero time fail over when a link goes down, its nice. This is what I find is the trend with features and Cisco, Cisco sticks with what is known and a bit reluctant to throw a new feature into the mix, where as a compeating vendor sees that as an opertunity. Cisco is slow and steady, where the other vendors tend to be lighter on their feet. sometimes when you are quick on your feet, you trip more often than the one walking slowly.

-g

16

All the places I've worked in the past decade have been all Cisco shops for
routing and switching, with a lot of Cisco use for security too (firewalls
and IDS). Same with my current position, but we're switching to Juniper for
all those product categories. Same or better performance, but 10-20% less
cost. Additionally, I find the Juniper command line has more features that
make operating and monitoring much more efficient. Also, JunOS has only one
development train which means that the commands I use work on every single
Juniper platform. It always bugs me when I’m trying to setup QOS across a
network with different Cisco platforms (CatOS, ASA, different versions of
IOS) and each platform has a completely different way of doing it.

F5 all the way for content management.

TippingPoint for IPS.

17

People (who should know) have told me L3 does for some of their 10GE bonding. If you want high end at low cost, the box does it. Just price 100GE cards at the different vendors. :slight_smile:

Jack

18

Cisco and my new Love; Juniper.. for Tier I / Peer

19

In article <xs4all.61EC3786-5732-4C5A-8938-A15E840DC75B@oicr.on.ca> you write:

Just as a pointer - one of the largest and most utilized IX (AMS-IX) has
their platform built on Brocade devices.

Brocade device's pre Foundry purchase correct? I can't see anyone that
large using Foundry in large deployments..

Well the ams-ix has been using Foundry for years, so it's
really the Brocade-formerly-Foundry hardware.

Mike.

20

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