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Opinions on Alternatives to Cisco Routers?
An anonymous reader asks: "I'm currently working on a project that is 'partnered' with Cisco. Despite that they make good routers, the company's relatively large size does not appear to be willing to meeting unique, customized, requirements. So what are your opinions of the alternatives: 3com, Juniper, etc? Anyone had bad/good experience with these companies? Are all their routers really essentially the same? How about comparative performance with totally customized routing solutions via Linux+Zebra or some other open solution?"
what could you possibly require that you need cisco to customize their stuff for you? with all the software/hardware coming out of that company, how's it possible that something doesnt quite entirely cover everything you need?
Don't for a instant use some elses-cisco WILL take it as a slap in the face. If you need something custom-goto someone on their end in charge, and request either the equipment, or someone whom they approve that WILL do what you want. I've dealt with Cisco before.
That said - what kind of customization are you looking for... Cisco is the gold standard on most things IP infrastructure these days.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
In my experience, Cisco can meet basically any NEED you have. A good sales engineer can fulfill almost any scenario and guarantee that it will work. The biggest downside with Cisco is, undeniably, price.
:).
Matching the featureset of a cisco installation with zebra? easy.
Matching the performance of a cisco box with Linux and Zebra? uh-uh. Not gonna happen. For a small installations maybe, but not when performance or load is involved.
Why? Cisco does everything in hardware (ASICS). You can't meet performance like that with a PCI nic and the various bottlenecks associated with standard PC-based architecture. Juniper realized this and made a business model out of it. The took some open-source OS (which I can't remember right now - BSD?) and added support for network-task specific hardware. They can match cisco on performance and load-capability if not on product line. And they do it for ALOT less. My suggestion - take a look at juniper, then throw the juni quote back in your Cisco reps face. See if you can get him to bend a little
Or at least that's what some would want :) Which would be interesting to see ...
... Theo himself is looking into replacing ciscos with OpenBSD.
...
Anyway, they already have good failover support for their firewall, nice bgpd, support for T1 hardware was recently merged into -current
Something good will come out of it, i'm sure
...at a relatively large telco, we had Cisco pretty much rewrite one of their software products for us. We didn't scream or shout, just pointed out that the product was flawed in some areas and that we really would like to use a complete Cisco solutions. They were even flying guys up from CA on a weekly basis at one point.
Yes, it did reinforce millions of dollars worth of equipment sales. But they also probably wouldn't have lost the sales if they refused.
-psy
There are plenty of router companies. Cisco is most popular, but that is the only thing you can easily see. Any other advantage needs to be tested in the real world (or in a lab).
Plenty of companies are as good or better, but until you define your requirements (to the point that few of us are qualified to comment) nobody can say which is really better.
IP is standard. There isn't much that someone can do different and still be correct. Firewalls, speed, and some max capacity. IPv6 would be nice too. Figure your needs and then ask who will meet them.
I've worked with and around several companies trying to knock Cisco off. It is hard because even when you have a technical advantage Cisco dominates. Sort of like how Microsoft dominates, but not as extreme, and Cisco has never been accused of being quite that evil.
And beware of slick salesman who will promise you any feature you ask for in order to get a sale.
don't listen to the other guy saying cisco will take it personal. First they won't even know, second we are a cisco partner and it's actually a pretty rare experience to even talk to someone at cisco (unless your techs are idiots and have to call them left and right).
If you have to go with something other than cisco you may as well be using your own linux solution (since they are basically all using embedded linux ANYWAY). Go with something like a via mini-itx board/case (rather nice solid case on caseoutlet.com that I use alot) or a ppc board.
Either way the main thing your looking for is something that can be passively cooled. I recommend having a case with a fan even if the chip is supposedly passively cooled. That way if the fan dies on you it's not a big deal. You also want solid state storage and enough ram to run the OS out of it. The general idea is to eliminate moving parts. Once you are running completely out of memory, and have no essential moving parts... you've got dedicated hardware devices matched at least equaled in this respect. And a 1ghz c3 at the very least equals 200mhz specialty chip (which are quite rare in practice despite everyone citing them to defend said routers).
Nope, the biggest concern your going to have is bus speed. I'd keep it in mind.
Your problem seems paradoxical. If your company isn't that big, I don't see how you would need any customization beyond what anyone off the street could get from Cisco. On the flip side, if you are that big, Cisco (as well as other companies) will do quite a bit to make sure you're happy.
Though I wouldn't recommend it, I've seen 30 systems all accessing the internet behind a $30 linksys router (appears to belong in a home network) with zero complaints. It was configured to work as a NAT and also provided port forwarding and log streaming. Though I doubt it could handle much more, it worked well for the given workload and setup needs.
So I don't think a cisco router is necessary for every network. For small networks, cheaper solutions work fine. Just remember that if you underestimate your future needs, it can cost you dearly later. But I've heard even cisco zealots talk about the routers crashing under load, which obviously should be unacceptable for any hardware of "enterprise" quality, but I haven't been around them long enough to see it for myself.
Search google for 'cisco "lawful interception"' if you like a good scare. Also, the fact that their IOS source code was recently stolen is another thing to be concerned about.
But what do I know? My experience with cisco routers is limited to a single class on network security. They're very flexible and featureful routers, certainly top quality even if not bug free, but whether you need one is highly dependent on what you'd want it to do for you.
Core Network:
Juniper
Layer 2/3 routers: (Can still perform all router functions, but are cheaper per-port)
Riverstone Networks
Extreme Networks
I wouldn't recommend anyone else. Alcatel, Foundry, and 3COM haven't really impressed me.
Interestng note, Qwest uses Juniper M20/40s in their core OC28 network. Juniper, IMHO, is the only real Cisco competitor for a network backbone. And, Juniper uses a BSD OS on their routers.
I've had good experience with riverstone support.
I work in an environment where we see many different router vendors every month. Riverstone seems to be the ones who stick around. Also, you might not have heard of them because they sell mostly MAN (Metro area networks) which are most deployed abroad.
-n
I know of several IT shops that will not allow non Cisco equipment into their infrastructure. Would make it hard (if not impossible) to qualify for those accounts.
Cisco is good, but they're by no means in a class all their own from a performance or capability point of view. Personally, I've found Extreme Networks can often offer considerably higher performance at a price that's a bit lower than Cisco's - and the care and feeding of Extreme's gear is *way* easier than Cisco's, too, which is a cost that you should NOT ignore...
I have nothing against Cisco, but Extreme "gets" performance far more than Cisco - for instance, Extreme's gigabit switches have deeper buffers than Cisco's which is irrelevant for most networking tasks, but shows up big-time when you try to do something serious like, say, storage-over-IP, or a cable head-end: it's just way too easy to overrun Cisco's buffers and wind up with your data all over the floor. Of course, if you ever have to retransmit anything because of this, the huge latency involved in that obliterates any chance of good performance. Extreme's engineers know this, and design their gear accordingly.
I'd suggest giving them a chance as an alternative vendor. (I have no relationship with Extreme, either, except as one pleasantly surprised by the company on several occasions.)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Okay, so I do network engineering for a living. I've been doing it for about eight years, so I think I have some insight for you. First off, ebrandsberg's +5 moderated statement (#9567080) is a little bogus.
While the math on the hardware is straight, he fails to comprehend that the routing engines of Linux and FreeBSD are completely not designed for rapid routing and forwarding lookups. While there is some progress being made in this area, it is incredibly slow work. The Linux and FreeBSD IP stacks are not designed for packet forwarding and rapid cut-through switching; they're designed for dealing with an entirely separate problem, and the code is pretty ugly compared to the rest of the large body of network code. BSD has a leg up on Linux, but 2.6 is catching up fast in this regard.
I don't understand what you think you're not getting from Cisco. From an innovation perspective, Cisco has pretty much every feature in real-world networks deployed that people need, with some minor exceptions in the MPLS world. While Juniper beats them on lookup and engine performance, the Juniper backplane has some distance to go when coupled with large amounts of traffic. Your own description of your problem isn't sufficient data for me to really speak to your requirements, but I have to go on record here and say I think your statement about Cisco not able to provide unique, customized needs is a little off-kilter. I question what your unique and customized needs really are, because the reality of network engineering is you find a set of features, you find a box that meets your performance requirements, and you roll out. Cisco has a feature/performance mix for every network from A to FF, including yours.
If your sales team isn't working well, then find a different one. This is standard business practice, and not unique to Cisco.
Please do not take the advice of other trolls in this thread who suggest that they can recommend you a vendor without knowing intimate details of your application. They are snakeoil salesmen. People who suggest Juniper, Extreme, Riverstone, may all have good recommendations, and they may be sound for your application, but I wouldn't make that judgement call without being absolutely certain that they knew all your requirements. For example, I do over 5Gb/s outbound to the Internet on Foundry Networks gear, and while it works, I can't honestly say that i'm happy with it for the features that I need. We gave Juniper a shot and they didn't have the right cost-per-port/density that we needed, so we ended up heading in Cisco's direction. This decision took me about a month and a half in comparing all the options, and doing a feature matrix that was weighted towards what I needed.
This may all seem like stupidity or busywork to you, but I assure you it is not. Any network design requires this much attention, and your company will thank you for it. Do not try to do things cheaply - the PC router road is a worn one, mostly because people come back down the same path they took to get there and go off in another direction.
If you are insistent on using "open-source" using Zebra, GateD, or Click under FreeBSD, Linux, or something else, I would advise you to wait for some time unless your traffic needs are under a couple of megs a second.