Depends on the features that are needed. Cisco seems to have a quite a bit of cisco-only protocols that require Cisco gear. And for our particular use-cases,

Depends on the features that are needed. Cisco seems to have a quite a bit of cisco-only protocols that require Cisco gear. And for our particular use-cases, we seem to need those features. Then again, I'm at a ultra low latency shop that requires port-to-port switching at sub 300 nanos and faster. If one is using standard protocols (bgp, ospf, etc) then mixing and matching doesn't really seem to be a problem.