pfsense in redundant pair for routing/security/vlan termination
cisco all the way for l2 switching
From: Andrey Khomyakov
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 11:36 AM
To: nanog group
Subject: Re: Is Cisco equpiment de facto for you?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.
On the other hand, the other vendors are generally willing to bend over
backwards and sort out interoperability issues and often have technical
resources that are just as experienced on the Cisco gear as the Cisco
techs are.
And while Cisco might have at one time done the "you should have bought
Cisco (click)" act, I don't get that impression these days as more
networks have equipment from mixed vendors for very specific parts.
There are reasons why one might choose to purchase gear from different
vendors in a "best of breed" approach. One might have load balancers
from A10 or Citrix, a firewall from Juniper or Palo Alto Networks,
access switches from Arista, core gear from Brocade and maybe even a
couple of Cisco boxes here and there where they make sense. Having one
single vendor for no reason other than to simply ease troubleshooting
might be a valid reason in some networks but doesn't make sense in
others. If you don't have the technical resources to sort out issues
in-house, sure, it might make sense to let the vendor do it all and in
that case you will need a network from one vendor. Different vendors
have different things they do very well. A network might want to
leverage those good aspects in their network design.
It basically comes down to the type of service you are offering and how
much money you have. For a "best of breed" network, you might have to
pay a little more for in-house talent. For a homogeneous network, you
might sacrifice performance in some areas for savings on talent. It
just depends on what is important to you. No one vendor, in my
experience, makes the very best gear at the very best price in every
portion of the network.
That isn't Cisco specific, it goes for practically all vendors.
Once upon a time, Andrey Khomyakov <khomyakov.andrey@gmail.com> said:
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.
That kind of behavior from a vendor tells me I shouldn't have bought
that vendor for either side.
To your point Andrey,
It probably works both ways too. I'm sure HP would love to finger point as well. I remember reading for my CCNP one
of the thought process behind getting all Cisco is the very reason you pointed out, get all Cisco!
How convenient though for Cisco to do that, I wonder if they are being sincere(sarcasm).
Wouldn't it a perfect world for Cisco to just have everyone buy their stuff...I think it's a cop out though and you really should
try to support your product as best you can if it is connected to another vendor.
I'm sad to hear that TACACS took that route. I hope they at least tried their hardest to support you.....
i think it really depends on who answers your call. I've called Cisco a few times before for inter vendor issues and they gave us the " call the other vendor " finger. .. Other times they saved the day.
i know some shops negotiate their support contract which precludes them from going threw the regular support escalation process. you get to speak to a more senior tech on the first 'hello'.
-g
just a side note, HP probably was the most helpful vendor i've dealt with in relation to solving/providing inter vendor interoperability solutions. they have PDF booklets on many things we would run into during work. for example, setting up STP between Cisco and HP gear, ( http://cdn.procurve.com/training/Manuals/ProCurve-and-Cisco-STP-Interoperability.pdf ).
At the time the other vendor in this case (cisco) flat our refused to help us. this was a few years back tho, things may of changed. I'd ask support "you are not telling me i'm the _only_ customer trying to do this" … to which they would try and play the "well most people don't mix gear"..
HP's example should be the yard stick in the field.
-g
to which they would try and play the "well most people don't mix gear"..
ha! Funny if you responded with, "Oh really? Thanks I didn't know that, I guess I'll get all HP...who do I talk to, to return this Cisco router?"
to which they would try and play the "well most people don't mix gear"..
ha! Funny if you responded with, "Oh really? Thanks I didn't know that, I guess I'll get all HP...who do I talk to, to return this Cisco router?"
I've threatened that one against Juniper and minutes later I had an engineer on the phone. At 3:30am. Funny how once you mention buying another vendor they raise an eyebrow.
for vendors who we were not getting the goods from, I've found calling your sales rep much more efficient than anything you can say/ask/beg/threaten the tech on the phone. Sales guys have the inside numbers to call, the clout to get things moving as they generate revenue for said vendor. his pay comes from you, you pay him, he works for 2.
-g
Well, technically, the HP reference tells you how to convert your Cisco
default PVST over to MST to match the HP preference.
The handful of HP switches versus the stacks and stacks of production
Cisco requiring conversion to suit them was "intimidating" to say the
least 
Foundry/Brocade on the other hand do PVST (so they say, I haven't given
it a thorough lab test).
Jeff
just to play devils advocate..
PVST is Cisco propriety.
I'd rather see vendors default to an open standard as opposed to something which is closed. the lowest common denominator…
in my eyes the document tells you how to make a cisco and hp switch work together, not convert.
numbers alone do not denote intelligence, if so cockroaches would rule the world. 8)
-g
To be fair, one is Cisco proprietary while the other is IEEE 802.1Q.
~Seth
To be fair to Cisco and maybe I'm way off here. But it seems they do come out with a way to do things first which then become a standard that
they have to follow.
ISL/DOT1Q
HSRP/VRRP
etherchannel/LACP
Just some examples..... I'm not aware of too many other vendors that create their own protocol, in which they then become a standard?
All I found (quickly without trying too hard) is that the IEEE version
is based on Cisco's MISTP rather than PVST.
~Seth
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.
This has been my justification in the past for buying Cisco for neither side the
next time.
I've never had Juniper tell me that until they could show clearly that the
misbehaving item was the brand C hardware on the other side. They even
went so far as to provide me very detailed analysis of the exact form of
misbehavior in the brand C gear and offered to talk to the C-TAC if I
could arrange it in order to better communicate the problem.
While I'm not sure this is the usual behavior of the J-TAC, I can say that
the C-TAC behavior described above is all too common.
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.
A network-equipment vendor that won't help you resolve interoperability
problems with equipment they didn't build (BTW, I've had C-TAC refuse
to resolve problems between different business units of C-Gear, too) IS
a reason to buy from other vendors, IMHO.
Vendors love to point at the other vendors for solutions. At least in my
experience.
Good vendors don't do that. Vendors that do that don't get my business.
Vote with your feet and your $$.
My $.0.2.
My $0.02
Andrey
Owen
This is a two-edged sword.
Cisco tends to do their own thing, then, try to push their way of doing it onto the standards
bodies when the competition starts trying to catch up.
Other vendors tend to bring ideas that will require interoperability to the standards bodies
and work on getting the standard at least partially defined before spending effort on
implementation.
There are advantages and drawbacks to both approaches.
Owen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aECSsfd4Wk
Watch this video, now, I know that it is essentially advertisement from brocade but the guy from ams-ix says something very interesting - "For us it is important to have a board-level relationship with the vendor, no matter who it is". So in the end this might be a factor in deciding which equipment to buy - whether your company will be able to have a higher-level relationship with your vendor so that you can expect appropriate treatment in case of emergency. With bigger company this would be harder, though I think the position "account manager" is essential this, whereas with smaller companies it is easier to build such a relationship
Thank you for this. I find him very honest and humble. Although he didn't mention Cisco, should I assume that
he's probably thinking about Cisco without saying it?
For anyone that has watched this, he has mentioned going from dual star topology to an MPLS.
Perhaps one can educate me a little on how that is better off-list? It is an intresting topology.
Do you guys run MPLS internally as your main topology? I was a little confused on that part....
Heard someplace, but we've been here ourselves:
"We were thrilled to hear they were assigning us our very own lead account
manager, until we found out the other levels were platinum, gold, silver, and
bronze..."
Probably not as large as AMX-IX, but London Internet Exchange (LINX): both
as Foundry and Brocade.
Jethro.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jethro R Binks, Network Manager,
Information Services Directorate, University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, number SC015263.