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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!
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.