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Cisco Seen As Trying To 'Slow Down Arista Anyway They Can' With Patent Lawsuits (crn.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article by CRN:Partners say Cisco's end game with its patent lawsuits against Arista Networks is simply to slow the fast-growing networking company and stunt any innovation efforts from competitors. "Cisco's goal is to try to slow down Arista and competitors any way they can," said Chris Becerra, president and CEO of Terrapin Systems, a Morgan Hill, Calif.-based Arista partner. "If they don't have the technology to beat them out there, they're going to try to slow them down any way possible." Last week, the San Jose, Calif.-based network giant won three of five patent infringement suits against Santa Clara, Calif.-based Arista dealing with its networking switches. The International Trade Commission recommended a ban on Arista product imports containing the infringing technology. Additionally, the ITC also ruled earlier this year that Arista infringed on several other Cisco patents pertaining to its private VLANS, system database and externally managing router configuration with a centralized database -- recommending a similar ban on Arista imports.For those unfamiliar, Cisco had filed its trade complaint in December 2014, in which it sought a ban on Arista's switches. Arista, which designs and sells multilayer network switches to deliver software-defined networking solutions, was formed by former Cisco employees.
Go go go Mrs. Ulal, kick cisco bastardz in da ballz
Fer cryin' out loud.
Patents should be abolished. So should copyrights. They're archaic relics of centuries past that are mostly used to squash innovation and creativity.
For years we bought pretty much only Cisco. Then from about 2003 onwards the sales team took over. Gone were the days of a useful website where you could quickly drill down to the documentation you wanted. Now you're presented with endless glossy white paper sales pitches full of buzzwords.
In parallel their hardware costs started to climb relative to their competitors. It was still very good hardware but all that glossy sales pitch and TV ad campaigns have to be paid for somehow so per port $ increases it is. To make their 10Gbit Nexus line they actually spun off a company, let them do the design and then bought them back once they had a product to prevent any ugliness with stock prices. Fair enough, but that's extra labor you have to recoup, so a bit extra $ per port increase there to.
When we needed 100 10Gbit ports we looked at Cisco, laughed at the price and bought Arista It's lower latency, rock solid and just works (ie all the things you used to expect from Cisco) but a hell of a lot cheaper.
As TFS mentions, "said Chris Becerra, president and CEO of Terrapin Systems, an Arista partner. " Arista says "wah Cisco is being mean to us" - after we illegally violated not one Cisco patent, but many, as confirmed by multiple hearings. On top of that, Arista is headed by a bunch of former Cisco employees. Sorry guys, when Cisco was paying you each $200,000 to develop new technologies, that was so CISCO could use them, not so you could take them home and sell them yourself.
If a bunch of people invested and risked their own time and money in the R&D for these technologies and came up with something Cisco didn't have, I would be rooting for them. When you're a Cisco employee living on Cisco money, working on Cisco projects, the results belong to Cisco.
As TFS mentions, "said Chris Becerra, president and CEO of Terrapin Systems, an Arista partner. " Arista says "wah Cisco is being mean to us" - after we illegally violated not one Cisco patent, but many, as confirmed by multiple hearings. On top of that, Arista is headed by a bunch of former Cisco employees. Sorry guys, when Cisco was paying you each $200,000 to develop new technologies, that was so CISCO could use them, not so you could take them home and sell them yourself.
If a bunch of people invested and risked their own time and money in the R&D for these technologies and came up with something Cisco didn't have, I would be rooting for them. When you're a Cisco employee living on Cisco money, working on Cisco projects, the results belong to Cisco.
Spot on, but if I don't stumble across a hilariously biased news article taken re-posted at face value, how else will I know I'm at Slashdot, and furthermore, be reminded why I don't come to Slashdot often these days.
We need someone to study the effectiveness of patents, the purpose is to encourage a sharing of ideas, but how often do people use them to look for ideas? It seems it is only used to protect ideas and prevent others from success. If I look at a patent then I should pay to us idea, if I independently invent it why should I pay?
Patent Privilege is worse than all other types, I hope social justice warriors get on board.
Last week, the San Jose, Calif.-based network giant won three of five patent infringement suits against Santa Clara, Calif.-based Arista dealing with its networking switches...The International Trade Commission recommended a ban on Arista product imports containing the infringing technology...Arista, which designs and sells multilayer network switches to deliver software-defined networking solutions, was formed by former Cisco employees.
Although I would love to see the patent system go away, the summary seems to indicate that courts and the ITC agree that Cisco is the victim in this case. Onlly one quote in the summary alleges that Cisco is gaming the patent system to "Slow Down" the competition.
Lesson: Before creating a headline, make sure that the FACTS in the summary agree with the premise.
If Cisco wants to act like world classless turds, I guess we should give Arista a call to see if they want to dazzle us and try to win those massive networking contracts away from Cisco.
And by "Any way they can" (or "anyway they can", if you're TFS, and apparently aren't particularly interested in being a journalist) they mean "with a number of lawsuits they are winning". Its not patent trolling when you're spending epic amounts on R&D and acquisitions to actively produce products. Furthermore, "Any way they can" suggests they're trying all sorts of different ways, when they're using one method, so TFS obviously saw clickbait and shamelessly grabbed at it for a headline instead of anything with actual integrity.
So.... slaves? Ya'll better be careful not to attract the attention of Daenerys Targaryen.
On top of that, Arista is headed by a bunch of former Cisco employees. Sorry guys, when Cisco was paying you each $200,000 to develop new technologies, that was so CISCO could use them, not so you could take them home and sell them yourself.
I'm aware of Cisco doing that spinning-in shit on a regular basis, but do you have evidence that Arista was founded by Cisco for this purpose?
Ezekiel 23:20
If Cisco was even remotely price competitive, I'd still be a customer. They haven't been remotely close to the best value for ages and that got me looking at alternatives. Adding insult to injury is the rather poor quality of service you get when you place a call to the TAC to have a problem resolved. F that. We probably spend mid-9 figures a year on switch and routing gear. Cisco bids on everything and will show up with an army of sales weens for any meeting, offer to take anyone with a pulse out to dinner/drinks/ and "gentlemen's clubs", but they just don't offer the service or value proposition for anyone who takes the time to make an apples to apples comparison with Arista.
Merchant silicon + decent software stack + stellar customer service works for me.
I'm not sure what you're saying / asking. Arista was founded by Cisco vice presidents who left Cisco and starting selling Cisco's patented inventions for their own personal enrichment. It was not "founded by Cisco".
Arista, which designs and sells multilayer network switches to deliver software-defined networking solutions, was formed by former Cisco employees.
More specifically, Arista was started by Andy Bechtolsheim who co-founded Sun. He went on to form a little company called Granite which was acquired by Cisco and formed the basis for their gigabit switching line (we all know it as the juggernaut called "Catalyst" switches). Many years after selling their 1Gb business to Cisco he went on to form Arista which, at it's core, is a 10Gb multilayer switch built on the "spline-leaf" concept (contrasted with the more traditional multi-tiered campus model of Core/Distribution/Access that we've been building for a decade or two).
Today I Learned that I took a troll too far. I'm still embarrassed for other Canadians even today, most of whom are shaking their heads at what an imbecile I've been. It's a matter of time before all of Canada starts apologizing for me, too. I'm so thankful to have you wonderful slashdotters helping me to become a better person, because most of you are smarter and better than me. Unlike me, you are not foolish children looking for attention. Look for me to become more humble and respectful of others. You deserve it. I've been an idiot.
I know there will be other ACs pretending to be me, trying to reverse my apology, and I know many of them will log in to their actual accounts hoping to quickly hide my apology at -1. It doesn't change the fact that that I've been a fool. I only hope that you can see through their lies and know that I am truly the AC that has acted like a buffoon.
I'm not sure exactly which part but some of your story is complete bullshit. We're a datacenter and also happen to resell hardware to our clients. We only spend 7 figures a year on network gear and we get nothing but excellent service/response times from Cisco TAC.
Then again, maybe you're just not liked over at TAC.
nt
The Cisco vice presidents who formed Arista were paid by Cisco about $250,00 annual base salary, $88,000 cash bonus each year, plus $150,000 stock bonus. So in total they each got about $430,000 per year.
If you think that's ANYTHING like slavery at all, you you're seriously divorced from reality. I -almost- wish you could experience being a slave, or even a typical third-world citizen, for just five minutes so you could get a sense of perspective for your spoiled, entitled, whining little ass.
Same old song and dance my friend, which is seen over and over again. Cisco used to be an innovator, but that brand has built up enough value that it's time for the MBAs to extract that value. RIP Cisco.
That must be a small DC business.
*yawn*
It's easy to spend mid double digit millions on a a single datacenter. When you've got lots of datacenters.....
Have a nice day.
That's pocket change at that level. I doubt those are even the correct numbers. They strike me as being extremely low.
They file lawsuits and win. They were right. You were wrong. And this is bad how? Because you work or own a competitor and you can't win without stealing IP from Cisco. Those poor thieves aren't being treated nicely. ahhh.
Arista being a tiny company - compared to Cisco - and what Cisco is doing is to stymie Arista any way it can
This will only push Arista into the arms of Huawei - a competitor, yes, but the enemy of my enemy, in business sense, can be my partner
So easy for raymorris the eater to say considering he's not capable of inventing anything himself like all phb types are.
I guess they'll have to manufacture in China, and we will buy from them and ship the products here.
If you cannot compete and deliver quality, no amount of buying the court system is going to save your lousy company.
Since at least 1999, Cisco executives have been saying that Cisco is really a software company - anybody can buy the same chips they buy and build similar hardware. Cisco invented HSRP, GLBP, PaGP, CDP,VTP, PVST/PVST+, RPVST+, MSTP, IGRP, EIGRP, CGMP, etc. before other companies followed them and started using similar vendor-neutral protocols.
What is your point? Cisco takes care of the "little guy" but not those sending boatloads of money?
Fuck off.
> I'm one of those evil people who left school and used some of the things I had learned for personal enrichment.
> So are you.
Did your school pay you $430,000 / year for you to help manage projects creating patented new technology, and in exchange you signed an NDA?
Me neither.
> since networking is about published standards and not trade secrets.
Some prefer open standards. I do. A few Cisco proprietary protocols which are/were better than the open standards of the time: HSRP, GLBP, PaGP, CDP,VTP, PVST/PVST+, RPVST+, IGRP,EIGRP, CGMP, and many more. CISCO networking isn't "about published standards", it's about always being two steps ahead of the standards.
Arista has a goal of building better switches than Cisco. When a company has a single focus which is to make a better product in a specific category than a massive company like Cisco, it's not hard to accomplish. Aruba made better wireless (until HP ruined them), Alcatel made better voice, Tandberg made better video (then Cisco bought them). Cisco makes "pretty darn good" in most categories, but they lack the agility to build exceptional in any of them. That's why they would do things like spin off companies who built awesome stuff and then buy them out.
Arista simply makes better switches. As an overall solution, they suck on a biblical scale, but for now, they are everything Juniper pretended to be.
Now, Cisco is using patent lawsuits to slow them down and restrict their ability to diversify into a solution. They most likely won't succeed. But as Arista diversifies their product line, the quality of each product will decrease and become more Cisco like in quality.
What is sad is that Cisco got into the server business with the goal to simply be 100times better than HP, IBM or Dell. They nailed it. Now they have diversified so much that their entire server line is suffering badly.
Actual innovation should be protected... But there are also *many* patents that are obvious for anyone working in that area and that he would solve in the same way if presented with the same issues to resolve.. I think there should be a peer-review of any patent before it goes to court.
> externally managing router configuration with a centralized database
You can patent that? Hmm... I wonder who holds the patents for:
* managing bank accounts with a centralized database
* managing medical records with a centralized database
* managing music collections with a centralized database
* managing contact information with a centralized database
* managing cable boxes with a centralized database
* managing user profiles with a centralized database
* managing picture albums with a centralized database
* managing patents with a centralized database!!!
Hop Lawyer, Hop!
:T:R:A:N:S:
EIGRP needs to come off that list as it is now (since May) an open standard. RFC7868 I believe
About what I'd expect from an AC troll. My point is that you don't know what you're talking about.
Toodles...
Yes, 23 years after Cisco introduced EIGRP, part of it is an open standard.
Still, it remains on the list of it "Cisco sets the standard, other vendors follow".
The reply about EIGRP made me think of a clearer way of saying it. Cisco sets the standard. Other vendors follow the standards. Most of the open protocols are copies of what Cisco did 5 or 10 years earlier.
As I said before, where there is a choice, I tend to prefer the ooen standard. I also give credit where credit is due, acknowledging that the open standard I use is based on Cisco's innovation.
I have worked in a position to support a variety of vendors and help customers select devices.
When a switch vendor *does* go their own way, management interface wise, no one will touch them for managed switches. They can comply with all the standards, have all the functionality, and outperform Cisco gear in every metric and undercut by a huge margin, but if their CLI does not look like Cisco's IOS style CLI, customers won't touch them with a thousand foot pole.
Juniper has been the only vendor to at least somewhat get away with a non-cisco like CLI, but even then it's generally a tough initial sale.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Since Cisco bought them out after they were successful than neither did they really.
Cisco owns the stuff they signed over and the Cisco stuff afterwards but does not own the people forever like slaves.
ob disc: I used to work at cisco in the very early days (menlo park, bullet in the building, for those that go back that far) and also recently (but not presently). being there in the old founding days and the more recent days, I can see how the company has changed.
they are not worth buying anymore, their products, that is. if there is one that does what you want by some other vendor, I'd recommend going there and not via cisco. having seen the quality of 'support' that cisco hires these days, I can't recommend anyone buy cisco anymore.
its all h1b's, its all foreign language inside cisco's san jose campus and the cluelessness is the worst I've seen in decades. they are hiring the cheapest warm bodies they can import and you know what that gets you. cisco does not even host its own INTERNAL FILES; they outsource it to (wait for it) drop box and other crap services like that. need some IT work done? its via IBM from 'roger' in india and it takes a week just to get anything done. when I started, I was without a company computer for a full month. does that give confidence in the company, as a whole? not to me!
they are too huge, over-hired and they lost their focus. there are a billion biz units in cisco and they tried to do too much. and like most other bay area biggies, they only care about getting warm bodies for cheap change; that never translates to innovation or quality.
pity about cisco. they were a good company about 15 or 20 years ago. but they are a dinosaur and unless they go back to their smaller roots, they'll still be too large to be competitive with the real innovators out there.
being a big bully will only get you so far.
Yeah, on the one hand, patent litigation to stunt a market is kind of bad play. On the other, patents are reasonable (14 years? Many technologies are too expensive or not ground-breaking enough to warrant licensing when invented, and *have* to sit; historically, patents on complex medical technology have frequently appeared over 150 years *before* the technology was feasible), you should negotiate reasonable licensing fees, and Arista is made up of a bunch of people who bailed on CISCO to compete with CISCO using CISCO technology they stole.
It's hard to back people who get paid to work for someone, then run off with the work they did.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
In the world of protocols, just being a year earlier makes you the standard-setter. That means absolutely nothing for Cisco's ability or inability to innovate. If Cisco weren't the first, someone else would and there'd be the exact same discussion about someone else. This isn't bread baking where you can switch your supplier at a whim.
Ezekiel 23:20
I'm paid $75,000 annually and I put about $2,300 in the bank each month. I don't cook at home, at all, ever. I spend excessively, and still bank over 60% of my paycheck. This time next year, it will be over 85% of my paycheck.
$75k is pocket change at my level. I've been offered $135,000 plus a $13k hiring bonus.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
> That means absolutely nothing for Cisco's ability or inability to innovate.
Cisco wasn't just the first to create an instant ethernet spanning protocol, or the first with load-balancing routing. There's a list of about 30 significant "firsts" for Cisco - one for every year of their existence. They don't just get lucky over and over and over again, they innovate, big time. Then they price accordingly. :)
I don't have an unlimited budget, so I don't buy new Cisco gear. I buy either "other" brand or used Cisco. While I'm buying other, I know why Cisco sells five times as much as their closest competitor, and why the brand choices are a) Cisco or b) Other.
25 years ago I participated in IETF boards & I came to the conclusion that the people from Cisco had the goal of stifling open system solutions because their competitors could work with them & Cisco was behind. If this was not their plan it is certainly the way it worked out now with protocols like EIGRP being a defacto standard that shuts out competition. I was also aware of other behaviors that would be a lot like what this story is reporting.
I'm pretty thrifty, but I have hard time imagining what your budget must look like. Unless perhaps you live in a country with very low cost of living, are single, and have your home paid off.
I did just pull up MY old budget from when I brought home 40% less money. I'm working out where I WANT to be putting the "extra" money, which doesn't line up with where I am spending it, I don't think. (I don't -think- because I haven't done a written budget recently).
I just drank a pint of bourbon, a glass of mushroom tea, a plate full of haggis, and a jar of jalapenas. I can feel the violent upheaval getting ready to start now.
That's pocket change at that level.
Oh well GGP must be right then, for 430k of pocket change annually they totally were slaves.