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3com to Compete with Cisco
RNelson writes "3com has announced its new lines of routers poised to compete with Cisco. 'The company claims that these routers will cost 30 percent to 50 percent less than similar offerings from market leader Cisco.' The new routers compete the Cisco's 3725, 3745, and 83xx routers."
How hard is that? Cisco sells their name, not equipment. While they are not in the same position Intel was before Amd became a threat, it's close enough to be useful for this discussion. Cisco can charge what they want, within the realm of semi-reasonability, and they will get it. Because, it's the name, not equipment or capabilities.
3com knows this, I suspect, which is why they are lowballing them. I would even suspect they think high enough of their name to not charge less than 30-50% less than cisco stuff.
You want to entice purchasing managers, but keep your name "good" in their eyes as well.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I love Cisco stuff. I does everything I want, it does it well, and it doesn't break.
3com have some good products, but in my experience they don't scale. If I was installing a 10 person office, a 3com firewall and switch is fine. But I wouldn't put 3Com anywhere except the access layer.
I'd also avoid 3coms VoIP solutions. I don't like their WoS, and the NBX is a dog. I'm not about to recommended Cisco because I have no experience with it, but 3Com won't even make it to the short list.
Didn't know about the NetGear/Juniper fusion. Juniper's high-end stuff is great, but way more than all but the largest enterprises and carriers would need. The Netgear lines will complement this well.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Eh? Just got into the router business? 3Com has been doing routers for YEARS now. Their core business was Ethernet from the start. It was only when they started trying to do EVERYTHING ELSE that they got in trouble. They were doing packet filters on their routers before it was in style. I remember working on a NetBuilderII router back in '97-'98 and updating packet filters.
Hi-Technical Excellent Taste and Flavor!
Out of hundreds of their products one (and based on Linux!) has a problem. Big deal...
Cisco at least provides publicly information about their security problems and makes timely fixes. It makes no sense bashing them - everyone else will have a problem sooner or later...
"Given Linux security history, switching to someone else might be a good idea."
Given that cisco deliberately installed backdoors, I'd say yes, it's a more secure option. Unless you feel it's reasonable for backdoors to be hidden in your router code...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That's an interesting thought. Didn't I hear about those somewhere before. Yeah, that's it. They used to sell routers and vacated the market. Rather quickly if I recall and a number of people got stuck with gear that they couldn't use.
I just don't know how quickly people will be to jump on the bandwagon with an organization that left many of there customers hanging with a "we're not doing this business anymore" message 3-4 years ago.
I'd pay more for an unknown brand because at least I have a chance at it working.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
Juniper has picked up some nice tech. Netscreen's firewall products are very nice. The Neoteris (Netscreen / Juniper) "SSL VPN" access solution is increadibly useful. But how will Juniper handle these aquisitions?
I'm especially interested since my team purchased and manages both Netscreen and Neoteris (before either went through the current tree of aquisition) products. And unfortunately, all we've gotten for the Juniper name is an increased maintenance cost and decreased quality of service. We'll have to see if this is just wrinkles from the aquisition.
Juniper has certainly made some interesting moves and nice aquisitions. They certainly have the technical firepower to be competative. We'll have to see if they CAN compete. Although... I agree. They would come to mind before 3com.
They had to make up for the fact that they can't sell a 14.4 modem for $300 anymore!
Only if 3Com provided a IOS-like command line interface will they be able to gain market share among trained CCIE/CCNA/... personnel. Of course, they will have to provide high quality (*cough*) equipment too...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Cisco IOS is great.
Yes it hasn't been consistent historically. That's because the Catalyst 5000 line was a purchased product, using "Catalyst OS".
Nowadays, all switches are coming with IOS, unless you specify Cat OS (can only put Cat OS on the chassis switches)
Plus - it's not an apples to apples comparison to compare IOS on the 3600 (router) to IOS on a 3500 (switch). The functions are inherently different.
IOS is not hard once you learn a few basics. You can practially build the commands without ever looking at documentation. For that matter all the docs are freely available on Cisco's website.
I have never seen Alcatel's gear or the OS. From looking at the documentation, Alcatel's CLI is a knock-off of IOS. That would leave you using the web interface. Cisco has a web GUI as well. I wouldn't use it, but it's there.
Sounds like you don't do enough networking to even make an educated evaluation of hardware or operating system.