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"My Cisco is better than your (whaterver)"
- Thread starter Kritter
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Cisco IMO...and in MANY other people opinion is no longer the defacto provider of switching/networking gear.
They are the household name, where everyone knows how to use them....they have great availablility and reasonable prices.
High End =
JUNIPER
EXTREME NETWORKS
FOUNDRY
Each of these will pretty consistantly outperform cisco in performance at a packet level.
The bad side........A fully populated M40 can from juniper can cost well over $1,000,000
They are the household name, where everyone knows how to use them....they have great availablility and reasonable prices.
High End =
JUNIPER
EXTREME NETWORKS
FOUNDRY
Each of these will pretty consistantly outperform cisco in performance at a packet level.
The bad side........A fully populated M40 can from juniper can cost well over $1,000,000
hokatichenci
Gawd
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I've never owned any Cisco hardware myself, but I always thought that Cisco was amazing because they had:
1) amazing quality (high uptime)
2) incredible tech support (24/7 by having rotating support groups worldwide with tiers)
3) high bandwidth networking fabrics on the backend
Now that I've played a bit with IOS in my networking Lab I don't really think that Cisco is "all that", but its pretty nice. Maybe I'm wrong about whats so great about them, feel free to correct me.
1) amazing quality (high uptime)
2) incredible tech support (24/7 by having rotating support groups worldwide with tiers)
3) high bandwidth networking fabrics on the backend
Now that I've played a bit with IOS in my networking Lab I don't really think that Cisco is "all that", but its pretty nice. Maybe I'm wrong about whats so great about them, feel free to correct me.
Cisco is great for 2 reaons:
1) SMARTnet/TAC/Customer Service
2) Quality of product
High quality/reliability means it hardly ever goes down, and when if does, you can have a entirely new piece of equipment on site in less than 8 hours.
Ya other companies' products can be compared to Cisco's products, but you cannot compare other companies themselves to Cisco. Way WAY out of their league in terms of size, service, customer satisfaction, R&D budget, acquisitions...etc. The list goes on and on. Cisco not only makes the superior product, they are the superior company.
1) SMARTnet/TAC/Customer Service
2) Quality of product
High quality/reliability means it hardly ever goes down, and when if does, you can have a entirely new piece of equipment on site in less than 8 hours.
Ya other companies' products can be compared to Cisco's products, but you cannot compare other companies themselves to Cisco. Way WAY out of their league in terms of size, service, customer satisfaction, R&D budget, acquisitions...etc. The list goes on and on. Cisco not only makes the superior product, they are the superior company.
Cisco is good for a few reasons:
1) TAC
2) The people they employ
3) Quality
4) Longevity of the company
If Cisco's TAC sucked, I'd be less willing to use them.
It's not so much that their equipment is superior, you just know it's going to work and that it will work correctly. If it doesn't work, you know you've got a solid company standing behind it with people who know what they're talking about. It's very hard to find that with many companies out there today. Even Juniper, as good as they are, dont beat Cisco's TAC.
1) TAC
2) The people they employ
3) Quality
4) Longevity of the company
If Cisco's TAC sucked, I'd be less willing to use them.
It's not so much that their equipment is superior, you just know it's going to work and that it will work correctly. If it doesn't work, you know you've got a solid company standing behind it with people who know what they're talking about. It's very hard to find that with many companies out there today. Even Juniper, as good as they are, dont beat Cisco's TAC.
Hehe, you know it's funny...you work in the telecom industry for a while and you learn these things as fact....but I am doing research on it...and it's not easy finding benchmarks for routers that cost 100s of 1000s of dollars.
Basically, the OPs question is a little vague.
In general:
-=My Cisco rox0rs ur Dlink/Linksys/NetGear/Belkin=- makes sense because each of the cisco switches does layer 3 routing. They support all the cool trunking and VLAN features that serious networks need to operate efficiently. I think efficiency is the key word here in fact.
Now, with that said, Cisco makes products for nearly every type of network need. They do Wide Area, Voip, Ethernet, Fiber, I think even SONET switches. On top of that, if you buy a like a 6500 you are only getting the chassis, and you have to populate the cards...which can be ethernet ports, fiber ports, OC cards etc. Very modular, very flexible.
Cisco also has the power of millions of units world wide, which has led to a very robust user base. It's like a snowball effect, they started out strong, got bigger and now are growing on their own mass.
Not ALL is well though on the Cisco front though. Cisco equipment (due to the flexibility ) has been deemed the "swiss army knife" of networking equipment. It does a lot of things...pretty good. For certain applications though:
Long Haul Switches
Optical Carrier Routing Speeds
Port Density
Cisco simply cannot perform as good as equipment designed specifically for that task.
Example. I have a customer who has 6 Extreme Black Diamond 10ks in our datacenters.
Each one of these has 10 card slots that can house 60 GigE ports (cat5 or fiber)
THAT'S 600 GIG-E CONNECTIONS IN ONE BOX. And the performance is amazing. Not too many people need that many ports, so of course you could throw in a 10-GigE card. Really some amazing equipment.
The Junipers I know best the Cisco gear in routing performance because every major carrier I know (MCI, NTT, Qwest, Verizon, L3, etc.) uses them in some fashion. These are companies who want the best, at any cost...and they (recently) have been going Juniper.
Sonus makes some cool stuff.
IMO, the best part about cisco, is that you can find it used for pretty good prices, and you know it will perform well. Believe it or not, I have seen 2400 series cisco switches go bad...dropping ports, losing packets etc.....but not often. I do not know the real technical side of the equip, but I am around it enough on a day-to-day to know what the trends are. Bottom line is that all of the aforementioned companies (cept Linksys (yes...i know it's owned by cisco) netgear and belkin) are good......even Dlink (for what you pay....IT'S A BARGAIN!
Peace!
Basically, the OPs question is a little vague.
In general:
-=My Cisco rox0rs ur Dlink/Linksys/NetGear/Belkin=- makes sense because each of the cisco switches does layer 3 routing. They support all the cool trunking and VLAN features that serious networks need to operate efficiently. I think efficiency is the key word here in fact.
Now, with that said, Cisco makes products for nearly every type of network need. They do Wide Area, Voip, Ethernet, Fiber, I think even SONET switches. On top of that, if you buy a like a 6500 you are only getting the chassis, and you have to populate the cards...which can be ethernet ports, fiber ports, OC cards etc. Very modular, very flexible.
Cisco also has the power of millions of units world wide, which has led to a very robust user base. It's like a snowball effect, they started out strong, got bigger and now are growing on their own mass.
Not ALL is well though on the Cisco front though. Cisco equipment (due to the flexibility ) has been deemed the "swiss army knife" of networking equipment. It does a lot of things...pretty good. For certain applications though:
Long Haul Switches
Optical Carrier Routing Speeds
Port Density
Cisco simply cannot perform as good as equipment designed specifically for that task.
Example. I have a customer who has 6 Extreme Black Diamond 10ks in our datacenters.
Each one of these has 10 card slots that can house 60 GigE ports (cat5 or fiber)
THAT'S 600 GIG-E CONNECTIONS IN ONE BOX. And the performance is amazing. Not too many people need that many ports, so of course you could throw in a 10-GigE card. Really some amazing equipment.
The Junipers I know best the Cisco gear in routing performance because every major carrier I know (MCI, NTT, Qwest, Verizon, L3, etc.) uses them in some fashion. These are companies who want the best, at any cost...and they (recently) have been going Juniper.
Sonus makes some cool stuff.
IMO, the best part about cisco, is that you can find it used for pretty good prices, and you know it will perform well. Believe it or not, I have seen 2400 series cisco switches go bad...dropping ports, losing packets etc.....but not often. I do not know the real technical side of the equip, but I am around it enough on a day-to-day to know what the trends are. Bottom line is that all of the aforementioned companies (cept Linksys (yes...i know it's owned by cisco) netgear and belkin) are good......even Dlink (for what you pay....IT'S A BARGAIN!
Peace!
You forget that 2 blades are required for SUP's. (in those BD's). So the maximum capacity is 480 ports. (not that it really matters..). Even then, i'd be hardpressed to believe that it was non-blocking.
I went through this comparison 1.5 years ago when i redesigned our infrastructure. It came down to Foundry, Cisco, and Extreme. (we used alcatel previously... not my decision, glad we left).
The thing with port density is, it all depends on when you need to buy your switches. When i need 200 GB ports with a 2:1 or less blocking ratio, Neither Foundry or Extreme could deliver. Granted, 6 months after, they introduced new products that could. But that would have required me to buy their new products.
The 6500 chassis has been around since ( I don' know how long), but I do know this. Everytime they had to increase backplane speed (to offer higher density), they've been able to keep the same chassis. From the PFC and MSFC combo to the SUP720's to the upcoming SUP1440's, i know that I have some level of futureproofing in my enterprise.
TAC (both the website and support) are top notch. hell, you could probably teach yourself most of networking by just reading their system configuration guides.
For switching, its Cisco, Foundry, and then other. I've heard/witnessed too many bad things with those BlackDiamonds. Sales support is poor, SE are non-existent. 3com left and came back to the market. HP oem's their higher end to foundry. Nortel ... i guess nortel could be 3rd =).
I went through this comparison 1.5 years ago when i redesigned our infrastructure. It came down to Foundry, Cisco, and Extreme. (we used alcatel previously... not my decision, glad we left).
The thing with port density is, it all depends on when you need to buy your switches. When i need 200 GB ports with a 2:1 or less blocking ratio, Neither Foundry or Extreme could deliver. Granted, 6 months after, they introduced new products that could. But that would have required me to buy their new products.
The 6500 chassis has been around since ( I don' know how long), but I do know this. Everytime they had to increase backplane speed (to offer higher density), they've been able to keep the same chassis. From the PFC and MSFC combo to the SUP720's to the upcoming SUP1440's, i know that I have some level of futureproofing in my enterprise.
TAC (both the website and support) are top notch. hell, you could probably teach yourself most of networking by just reading their system configuration guides.
For switching, its Cisco, Foundry, and then other. I've heard/witnessed too many bad things with those BlackDiamonds. Sales support is poor, SE are non-existent. 3com left and came back to the market. HP oem's their higher end to foundry. Nortel ... i guess nortel could be 3rd =).
Thats not really true. It depends what the switch was designed for. A lot of the cheap brands are designed for home use by someone who probably doesnt know much about networking. Almost every Cisco switch that is designed for use in the home/small office is also packed with features that make integrating it into a larger network very easy. I wouldn't recommend Joe User to buy a Cisco switch to plug his 4 PC's into, and I wouldn't recommend Joe Network Admin to buy a Linksys switch to run 20 mission critical servers on either.Mysogonist said:
Also, Cisco makes plenty of layer 2 switches that dont do routing of any kind.
Juniper makes a lot of good stuff, and pretty much dominate the ISP market right now. Juniper's JTAC still is not as good as Cisco's TAC though. In fact, I hate calling JTAC. They have a bad tendency to "minimize" the impact of a problem you're having, and treat it as if it's not as important as it really is. "Your SSL box has a problem that is keeping people from accessing your network? Thats a Level 3 problem, not Level 1." No you moron, that's a Level 1 problem because my REMOTE ACCESS NETWORK IS COMPLETELY DOWN.
Cisco makes some nice equipment, good support and everybody knows their name (like Cheers I guess). That being said, I don't think they are best at what they do. My company is a fiber to the home/business provider, we provide voice/video/data (Triple Play). We use Extreme Networks Black Diamon 68xx line for all our Fiber and ethernet connections. THe extreme performs amazingly well for what we throw at it, PPS is high, port density is high (16 GBIC's per Slot), much higher than Cisco's comparable product. Price was much lower than Cisco as well.
While we currently have a cisco router at our edge we will be replacing it with a juniper M10 in the near future as the cisco isn't performing near where we need/require it to be. Our other Junipers have been performing well above/beyond where the cisco's were and have slowly been phased out, this should remove all cisco's from the edge with a few 2621's left for various low use applications
While we currently have a cisco router at our edge we will be replacing it with a juniper M10 in the near future as the cisco isn't performing near where we need/require it to be. Our other Junipers have been performing well above/beyond where the cisco's were and have slowly been phased out, this should remove all cisco's from the edge with a few 2621's left for various low use applications
Just to throw it out there, he's a cool picture of an Extreme Networks product. I use to have one of their BlackDiamonds until it was killed in a renovation and replaced with a Cisco product. The BlackDiamond was a beast that never skipped a beat.
Anywho, it's a picture of them showing off a switch with 792 1Gbps ports under full load pushing the full 792Gbps from what I was told.
Anywho, it's a picture of them showing off a switch with 792 1Gbps ports under full load pushing the full 792Gbps from what I was told.
Hehe...good to see this migration to extreme and juniper is happening outside of my little corner of the world. You should see the networking nerds flock to ***'s cage space simply because they have 3 M40s. HEHEHE. I love the business that I am in, the equipment I see tenants deploy is pretty amazing. The latest was about 700 Dual Proc Blade Servers. Nuffin like a big heaping of three phase power! Oh yeah...this was about networking....
Fact: There are 7 OSI layers.
Discuss.
Fact: There are 7 OSI layers.
Discuss.
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i love my 3620, does everything i want and then some...
but for switches i'll stick with my nortel passport 8010... dosent ever home need 192 10/100 ports and 8 gige ports and have two more blade slots left over!
but for switches i'll stick with my nortel passport 8010... dosent ever home need 192 10/100 ports and 8 gige ports and have two more blade slots left over!
insanarchist
[H]ard|Gawd
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LittleMe said:
Anywho, it's a picture of them showing off a switch with 792 1Gbps ports under full load pushing the full 792Gbps from what I was told.
*clears throat*..
HOLY LIVING SHIT.
I can't say that I've had much experience with products other than Cisco, but that doesn't mean I assume that they're the best in the world. Sometimes, a good product that you know how to use and implement is better than a great product that doesn't make a lick of sense to you. I know Cisco, so I tend to stick with it. Of course, I don't exactly do the level of networking that a lot of you guys do. For the most part I do small offices and generally it makes people feel all warm and fuzzy knowing that Cisco equipment runs their network.
And that pic... DAMN. That thing must've been throwing off some major heat.
I feel for the guy that had to pack it all up afterwards.
And that pic... DAMN. That thing must've been throwing off some major heat.
I feel for the guy that had to pack it all up afterwards.
I will...restrain...myself in this thread. Know that I have no love for cisco gear.
Cisco is popular because it kisses PHB's asses and charges 10x as much for it's products, giving them better percieved value. There are only two areas that I have to say I like cisco, the first is their IP phones. Polycom is better, but theirs aren't bad. The second is support. I hear it's awsome.
For what they charge, it damn well better be.
For most applications, I'll take a well placed linux box. Easier to manage and more versatile in most cases.
It all comes down to using the right tool for the job.
Cisco is popular because it kisses PHB's asses and charges 10x as much for it's products, giving them better percieved value. There are only two areas that I have to say I like cisco, the first is their IP phones. Polycom is better, but theirs aren't bad. The second is support. I hear it's awsome.
For what they charge, it damn well better be.
For most applications, I'll take a well placed linux box. Easier to manage and more versatile in most cases.
It all comes down to using the right tool for the job.
Darthkim said:
exactely, they've done a great job with the 6500 chassis (and the backplane with new sups)
I've heard that the sup720 is a "full duplex" measured reading (720gb/s) , any truth to this? but it is def. nice to have a solid chassis like that with such leaps in switch fabric cards
FLECOM said:i love my 3620, does everything i want and then some...
but for switches i'll stick with my nortel passport 8010... dosent ever home need 192 10/100 ports and 8 gige ports and have two more blade slots left over!
8010 is a decent chassis, we just started getting our 8692 SFPs in ((256gigbit/s) x2 ) *2 chassis in a IST/splitMLT environment = 1terrabit core.
that's one thing nortel has over cisco, the IST and SMLTs,
it works wonderful!
Mysogonist said:
it's amazing how many people think cisco "runs the internet",
they did a great job because anyone entry level or not really familiar with anything at all just assumes cisco is in all the carrier backbones, because their name is pushed out there so hard (i don't blame them, i thought the same thing to years ago).
Well, my experience lies with the pix mainly. Which are silly little over priced boxes. However, this kind of crap kind of tainted me against them as a corporation.logo29a said:What?
If all you need is a linux box running ipchains or whatnot, no wonder you have no love for cisco equipment. You have absolutely no need for it. What are you doing? ...bridging a two PC network?
There are higher level things that I haven't done that a linux box doesn't work for ( right tool for the right job ), I know this. But I'm still biased against cisco. I'd actively go out looking for different companies.
SYN ACK said:
That is correct. I had to get through some Marketing bullshit with cisco to get the correct figure.
6509, 9 blades, 40 Gb/s per blade. In reality one could call it the 360's as that would be more accurate.
Though in a weird way, the 6513 doesn't get you more bandwidth. There you have 7 blades that run at 40 and the last 6 can only run at 20GB/s per blade. Or something like that.
XOR != OR said:
The PIX (at least the older PIX 520) *is* a PC, with a fancy flash memory card, running the PIX OS. It uses standard PCI NICs, with a regular Intel motherboard and CPU (it even has an AGP slot and the normal IDE/floppy controller). I really want to take an old Local Director (basically a PIX but with a different software set) and install OpenBSD on it, and use it as a firewall.
SYN ACK said:
You are going to have to explain yourself further here...
When people say Cisco runs the internet I think they are speaking in majority terms, like Cisco gear is in the majority of carrier datacenters and they do have the market share. I dont think they mean everybody is 100% Cisco.
Ok, let me rephrase.
Most people out there (that i've talked to) don't know about juniper, extreme, fore/marconi, etc., carrier-grade stuff. They think Cisco runs all of the back-bone infrastructure.
But like I said too, a few years back ... i didn't know about juniper either
Most people out there (that i've talked to) don't know about juniper, extreme, fore/marconi, etc., carrier-grade stuff. They think Cisco runs all of the back-bone infrastructure.
But like I said too, a few years back ... i didn't know about juniper either
SYN ACK said:But like I said too, a few years back ... i didn't know about juniper either
QFT! Since I started working in a Carrier Hotel, my eyes have been totally opened to things I had no idea about.....and that is that I have always been technically oriented. There are so many aspects of the intarweb that most people will never know about beyond IP addresses and packets. I mostly see the business side of the issues, but I do also love to see the fancy new equip being deployed.
SYN ACK said:Ok, let me rephrase.
Most people out there (that i've talked to) don't know about juniper, extreme, fore/marconi, etc., carrier-grade stuff. They think Cisco runs all of the back-bone infrastructure.
But like I said too, a few years back ... i didn't know about juniper either
You have to admit that when Cisco rolled out the CRS-1 people sat up and thought "Maybe cisco can be in the backbone." Then they sat back down when they heard it ran IOS XR. LOL
LittleMe said:Just to throw it out there, he's a cool picture of an Extreme Networks product. I use to have one of their BlackDiamonds until it was killed in a renovation and replaced with a Cisco product. The BlackDiamond was a beast that never skipped a beat.
Anywho, it's a picture of them showing off a switch with 792 1Gbps ports under full load pushing the full 792Gbps from what I was told.
Holy fuck. What the hell is that thing?
PopeKevinI
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Cisco isn't the "best" as performance goes. There are companies that make products that can outperform comparable Cisco products, for less money.
Of course, those companies don't usually make every other product you might need for a large network. And even if they do, there's not an established training and certification program so that companies can easily find people competent enough to manage the equipment.
In other words, what makes Cisco a desirable product today is the fact that you can run an all-Cisco network and hire a CCNA to run it. No other company has that.
Of course, those companies don't usually make every other product you might need for a large network. And even if they do, there's not an established training and certification program so that companies can easily find people competent enough to manage the equipment.
In other words, what makes Cisco a desirable product today is the fact that you can run an all-Cisco network and hire a CCNA to run it. No other company has that.
PopeKevinI
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FLECOM said:
Didn't I sell that to you?
Good to know you're enjoying it
LittleMe said:Just to throw it out there, he's a cool picture of an Extreme Networks product. I use to have one of their BlackDiamonds until it was killed in a renovation and replaced with a Cisco product. The BlackDiamond was a beast that never skipped a beat.
Anywho, it's a picture of them showing off a switch with 792 1Gbps ports under full load pushing the full 792Gbps from what I was told.
CRAZY SHIT!!
But at least they coulda cleaned up the cables a bit!?