Comments on: How Are You Feeling About Cisco ?

By: Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:09:57 +0000

HP ProCurve is still having some teething problems. Jeremy Gaddis has documented a number of problems and they ended up taking al the kit back. My impression: ProCurve isn’t quite ready, but will be in a year or two.

By: Wesley "Nonapeptide"

Wesley "Nonapeptide" — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:38:25 +0000

Cisco hardware seems to be overpriced and their support contracts equally so. ProCurve FTW!! Free lifetime support for the life of the product? Free hardware replacement for as long as HP is a company? And still people buy Cisco! What am I missing??

Of course, I realize that ProCurve does not offer the same large scale routing and switching equipment as cisco does. For all but the most intense applications, ProCurve sends Cisco home crying, IMO.

By: RenÈ Jorissen

RenÈ Jorissen — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:57:07 +0000

I totally agree with Dan Hughes. I just love the Cisco equipment, especially the routing and switching gear. I notice that there is a “battle” between Cisco and other vendor in the Netherlands. Most managers tend too choose the cheapest solution, without consulting the technical engineers.

From a technical perspective I would choose Cisco for routing and switching. The feature set is just enormous and the troubleshooting capabilities are much better then most other vendors. But as Dan mentions, Cisco is just one big arrogant company. We are trying to arrange a partnership with Cisco, but after 2 months, hundreds of phone calls and e-mails we still have no result.

But it is good to broaden your horizon and also look at other vendors. We consultant our customers with the best solution for there network and every network is different. For some networks HP ProCurve covers the routing and switching, sometimes we choose CheckPoint or Juniper for firewalling and Aruba or Colubris for wireless solutions. Luckily Cisco isn’t the only player at the market….

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:18:17 +0000

My account team has been getting a lot more pushy, and our costs for maintaining our Cisco voice infrastructure have been going up and up. I love Cisco for routing and switching, but for other stuff I’ve been getting a lot less excited about them.

That’s one reason behind me trying a career change (my last day as a network guy is Monday) ; Cisco just isn’t “fun” anymore.

By: Dan Hughes

Dan Hughes — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:16:14 +0000

I think Cisco is hard to get religious about. I use Cisco kit every day, their Tac is great, their products generally pretty good, i love the IOS, but the company is just ‘blah’.

Cisco’s biggest issue is their arrogance. I seem to expect our business. So I think it’s important we push back. Use the best product for the job, design without vendor in mind.

By: Santino Rizzo

Santino Rizzo — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:03:03 +0000

CIsco products aren’t always best-of-breed, but they offer compelling end-to-end solutions. However, SMARTnet is pure evil.

By: armorguy

armorguy — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:41:52 +0000

I think Cisco makes superb routing and switch gear for the enterprise – there’s nothing else quite like it.

That being said, Cisco has not done a great job as a “security company” (MARS, anyone??? CSA???)

True enough that the line between security devices and network devices is blurry (if it even still exists) but I don’t see that Cisco is really a security partner.

That could change but it isn’t the case today IMHO.