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I would like to add that on almost anything made by Cisco that is smaller than 4U there really is not any kind of hardware secret sauce. Small switches like 296
by dfox 6y ago
I would like to add that on almost anything made by Cisco that is smaller than 4U there really is not any kind of hardware secret sauce. Small switches like 2960 are little more than off-the shelf switching fabric from one of the well-known vendors of such a thing and software. And really only interesting thing about the software on the device is the Cisco “feeling” and branding.
Also counterfeit Cisco hardware seems to be a major issue for Cisco since at least nineties. It is the reason why there are hologram stickers on almost anything. Then there is the observation that a lot of Cisco hardware contain some kind of completely unnecessary FPGA/ASIC implementing some comparatively trivial functionality, I suspect that the whole reason for this is to make counterfeiting harder.
- Cyph0n 6y agoDisclaimer: I work on SP-grade routers at Cisco. The secret sauce has nothing to do with router size, but rather port density, bandwidth, and feature scale. For instance, Cisco’s latest generation of routers, the Cisco 8000 series, gets you 10.8 Tbps in a 1 RU fixed form factor. What larger routers do provide is hardware redundancy, which is important when it comes to minimizing downtime.
- dfox 6y agoThe <4U size was meant as approximation of the expected market segment and the number itself came to me as “anything smaller than smallest 6k5”. In fact I just wanted to avoid the “entry-level” moniker. Another question is router vs. switch. And as for routers I'm still somewhat discontent with Cisco's marketing wrt. CEF which on “small-ish” Cisco platforms simply meant implementing routing logic in software in exactly same way as any OS with BSD derived IP stack instead of the original IOS braindead implementation. And as for hardware redundancy: I have large amount of stories that somewhat discredit the idea of low level redundancy (ie. you remove the SPOF and replace it with another failure point in the fail over logic that is guaranteed to fail in ways that nobody understands). And two of these stories with largest impact involve Cisco hardware.
- zxcmx 6y agoHmm things which are not just a feeling: * Confidence in interoperability / drop in replacement * Can use existing configuration(s) without rewriting * Can benefit from existing knowledge, training, expertise and documentation * Service, existing contracts, etc. * Network architects / designers don't have to find new visio stencils (Ok joking... well, half joking). TL:DR; I think most customers in Cisco are buying into the ecosystem, not the hardware.