You're probably thinking of the Network World review a few months back.
As I understood it, Network World asked Cisco, Bay, and 3com to submit
their high-end router for testing, and Cisco submitted the 7200. This
had me a bit confused, too. Even with my limited Cisco knowledge, I know
a 7200 isn't a high-end router. Someone told me that they probably
submitted it because the 7200 had Netflow and the others didn't or
something. Of course, Cisco dumped Netflow shortly after they came
out with it, so I'm not sure what that tells you..
Why do you think it's bad that these reviews make you want to buy new
hardware? Personally, I enjoy seeing what the competition is offering.
Maybe by having Bay's BCN blow away the competition on packet throughput,
it will encourage Cisco to get off their asses and build a scalable router
that doesn't need to be replaced every year. And maybe it will encourage
3com to.. well... build a decent router period. 
-Jon
Why do you think it's bad that these reviews make you want to buy new
hardware? Personally, I enjoy seeing what the competition is offering.
Personally - because their results differs from my opinion
totally - I'll never get some router because it's faster (interesting
questions for me is - can it hold 40,000 routes? What's the cost of
memory upgrade? How many HSSI, Serial and Ethernet interfaces I can plug in?
Can I reconfigure BGP withouth reloading total router? and so on...
No one answer. But - I get information _router XXX drops some packets if they
try to cause it work with 10 FDDI links, etc..., etc... very interesting
and absolutely useless...
And when I ask some network administrator about this, I get direct
answer - router XXX have not _telnet_ configuration option, router YYY
have not 'ip classless', router ZZZ use 85% of CPU when driving 16 Async links on
115,200 bps - its' an answer for me. But their comparation... brr.
Another example - modems. I can't speak for USA, but there (in Russia) modems
differ by their stability, interoperability, LL options, _if I can
restrict lower speed of modem connection_, _if I can cause modem don't try
too hight rate in case of bad line_, etc, etc... No one answer I can
found in the review (sorry, I forget when I read it last) - but I
read _modem XXX is faster than YYY on 20%_ - very interesting...
Another pragmatic solution is to call the editors of comm week, network
world, data communications and suggest that they might get a lot of
mileage writing a story comparing and contrasting the performance of
ISPs. They do this for routers, bridges, FR services so they can
probably find a respectable consulting/measurement group to collect
Yes, they do. It would be better (sometimes) if they did not -
When I read their comparations I sometimes think to drom all my hardware
(BAD in terms of this magasines) and bue new one (Bay Networks as BB routers,
FORE ATM as ATM
, etc...). Through it's strange idea (for example) to compare
hight-end Bay router with CS7200 (middle-range router), or to
You're probably thinking of the Network World review a few months back.
As I understood it, Network World asked Cisco, Bay, and 3com to submit
their high-end router for testing, and Cisco submitted the 7200. This
had me a bit confused, too. Even with my limited Cisco knowledge, I know
a 7200 isn't a high-end router. Someone told me that they probably
submitted it because the 7200 had Netflow and the others didn't or
something. Of course, Cisco dumped Netflow shortly after they came
out with it, so I'm not sure what that tells you..
The 7500 series supports NetFlow. The ISP's currently testing/using
netflow in their networks would be quite surprised to learn that cisco has
"dumped" it. The development engineers working on further improving its
usefulness, both for switching and for gathering of statistics would also
be astonished 
Robert.