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The entire telecom industry has been asking this question for the last 20 years. They have finally broken Cisco’s hold over the last 5 years by just building th
by exelius 8y ago
The entire telecom industry has been asking this question for the last 20 years. They have finally broken Cisco’s hold over the last 5 years by just building their own hardware a la Facebook and Google. Turns out it’s cheaper that way anyway, and they were already having to hold cisco’s hand through meeting spec lists, so it’s not much extra work for them to own the IP.
- ra1n85 8y agoIt’s only cheaper if you’re operating at large scale. For the vast majority of organizations, Cisco/Juniper/Palo Alto/Arista are the only cost effective options.
- exelius 8y agoRight, but at the low end, there are better options than Cisco (all 3 you mentioned really). At the high end (carrier grade), there weren’t necessarily. They’re not going it alone; ONOS [1] is basically the open source carrier-grade networking platform. Think of it as Kubernetes for SDN packet routing that they’re building custom network integration solutions (think routers, bulk fiber termination, RF, satellite, laser, WiFi mesh) on top of. Then get Chinese manufacturers to build the hardware (which doesn’t have anything proprietary in it — all white box with Intel or ARM CPUs). Incredibly powerful and flexible, and they have all the heavy hitters involved (Google, Intel, Samsung, AT&T, Comcast, etc.) It will be a game-changer for telecom in another 5 or 6 years once the management tools mature and commercial solutions based on it are developed. [1] https://www.onosproject.org/ https://www.onosproject.org/
- user5994461 8y agoCisco never sold low end hardware. Tell us what are the great alternatives in middle end.