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HP Accuses Cisco of Diverting Data Center Standard
alphadogg writes "Networking rivals HP and Cisco have abandoned their common ground in data center switching, with HP accusing Cisco of diverting an IEEE standard and Cisco insisting that customers drove the change. At issue are two as-yet unratified standards in the IEEE for data center switching that were being defined in concert but are now diverging: IEEE 802.1Qbg and 802.1Qbh."
According to TFA, Cisco (and others from the IEEE ballot) wished to add SP capabilities, as well as broaden the standard to support multicast at a tagging level. It's not like Cisco are subverting an existing standard or using their market share to lock out existing HP solutions.
Sure, if this was out there, ratified and Cisco broke it as an embrace, extend, extinguish then I'd see the issue. But it's not, they just wanted to add something for a market HP don't play in (Service Provider) and HP got upset by it...
Smells like trolling to me.
Yes, thats why MS forced OOXML as open document standard beside ODF. With two standards people do not know which to use and so stay on old one (MS closed). And, actually, OOXML is't even open.
Depends on how fancy you want it(and how much you feel like paying...)
Cisco has a fairly commanding lead in Real Serious WAN routers and such; but is just narrowly ahead of HP in share for the more basic managed switches that(unless you are absolutely made of money) probably provide most of the ports that your gear is hanging off. Particularly given the growth of both cost-sensitive-but-massive-in-scale commodity cluster/cloud provider stuff(which certainly doesn't cost 8.5 cents an hour by running on infiniband...) and the widespread adoption of VM clusters and iSCSI SANs among smaller outfits that wouldn't know what a fibre channel HBA looked like, being the "solid(unlike Dell switches, may no one have mercy on their souls); but comparatively inexpensive provider of bulk ethernet ports isn't exactly a bad place to be...
Not to worry. My sources tell me that the IEEE should be coming out with a new standard, needlessly crufty because of the need to be backwards compatible with both of its compatible predecessors, just a year or two after you've made a major investment in hardware that the vendor has no plans to support upgrading. Everything should be fully sorted out after you retire.
The rag tag bunch of individuals on the opposite team are tenuously bonded by their common opposition to Deep Pockets, but will spend as much time fighting their own team as Deep Pockets, Inc. These people are against Deep Pockets, Inc on principle, and because their motivation is their "principle", they would be against anyone who do not share their principles, even if they are in their own team.
The game play is very interesting to watch and very tragic in outcome. Usually Deep Pockets, Inc will be able to do the equivalent of changing the supply voltage of the household electric connection, and make every electrical appliance in the house to become obsolete, once in two years. The benamis will be paid their 30 shekels, Deep Pockets will report robust growth in their electrical appliance sales, and the rag tag individuals will gripe about it in slashdot. And the game will repeat. So predictable, so enjoyable.
[*] Glossary:
Benami, (n) Someone who holds a title to a property for legal purposes while some one else is the real owner. A system created in India during British Raj when the British army officers were not allowed to own property in India. They would nominate a native as the owner on the title papers, but continue to be the de facto owners of the property, sometimes without even the knowledge of the benami. It has now evolved into a huge tax evasion infrastructure for Indian politicians, civil servants, traders and money launderers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Honestly, when push comes to shove, who is going to defer to HP over Cisco when it comes to networking? Despite the obvious trolls and flames against Cisco because they are so big, as a network engineer who deals with many different vendors everyday on a huge enterprise level network, I long for the day of an all Cisco environment. Why? Because Cisco stuff just works. All of our main components are Cisco: Firewalls, Wireless controllers and access points, and high-level layer-3 switches and routers. Before we were mostly Cisco, there were nothing but problems, including compatibility on the hardware and protocol level and just general failures of hardware. Since the move to a mostly Cisco network we have less than 50% of the issues we had before. Perhaps it "just works" only because Cisco uses some proprietary protocols and such, but who cares when it all works so well?
Our longest running devices on the network (been up for over 800 consecutive days) are Cisco. We have Juniper, Enterasys, HP, 3Com, Linksys Business-class, IBM, and several other vendors equipment on our network in one form or another, and the only one we never have an issue with is Cisco. I don't think this is coincidence.
So why would anyone go with or defer to HP when it comes to networking? Anyone who has sat in a room with HP delivering a marketing presentation will know they claim "We are better than Cisco because _______" all day long. Problem is, they aren't. And anyone who has configured an HP device from the CLI will tell you that they are so similar to Cisco in terms of the feel it goes well beyond flattery with how much they model after Cisco. Problem is, HP has the same problem that most other networking vendors have: they are still lacking when compared to Cisco. Both in support, quality, and reliability.
Perhaps someone has had bad experiences with Cisco, and that turned them off to them for life, but most people who work in networking everyday will tell you they'd rather be on a Cisco device than any other.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."