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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.
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).