I like cisco too, but I'd really prefer that Bay, 3Com, or Netstar were on par w/ cisco and forced them to do things better. As it is, they seem to stagnate from lack of competition...
Yes. This is key. Give me something with a command line interface; as many options for controlling OSPF and BGP; completely interoperable OSPF and BGP w/ Ciscos, using the same algorithms for route selection; and I'll consider it and perhaps buy some. It's a catch-22, but few (esp. large) providers have the engineering time to set up a separate backbone and slow-migrate customers over to another backbone based on different routers/router technology (hi, Curtis). As a result, they stay locked in to Ciscos - with their admitted and perceived problems.
-alan
Avi