> relatively cheap. I know our costs are lower and quality is higher
> than our competitors and I believe the reason is that we go for a
> simple network designed around cheap routers and fat pipes. We madeOK. I'll bite. What do you define as a "cheap" router, and just as
important, what counts as a "fat" pipe where you are?
Cheap is defined as the undepreciated Ciscos that UUnet threw out when
the lyin' backbone engineers sold management the MPLS bill-of-goods in
the late nineties.
[ Why buy Juniper when you can get second-hand Cisco gear for almost
free? ]
Fat is 4 OC3s for uplinks at ~$200 per megabit and gigabit for
internal at about $40 per fiber mile per month. This is consumer
service in Northern New England. At those prices, it is far cheaper
to "overbuy" than over-complicate. Naturally, in different geographic
areas and different market niches your mileage may vary. Or at least
offer an excuse to ignore me.
You didn't choose the well-known router line from the well-known
vendor(*) that handles line-speed packets, as long as you don't even
whisper "ingress filtering" within it's hearing, did you?
Whispering is not exactly my style.
regards,
fletcher