On 15/Sep/20 21:07, Nick Hilliard wrote:
This gets complicated quickly, and that complication can only be solved by adding complication to silicon, which is what you want not to do when the speed of your underlying forwarding plane is increasing by leaps and bounds. Good, cheap, fast. Choose two - or maybe one.
More complex silicon means tons of R&D, which means big prices to recover that from operators who "want want want" that R&D in their networks.
As Mark points out, many companies have made their fortunes with a full stack product offering, from hardware and software to design, engineering and operations. It's not a bad business model as long as you realise that it's time-limited to the technology of the day. When it draws to a close, it's hard to turn companies around that have been used to a single-product or single-vertical cash trough which no longer exists. Some have done this successfully; others have floundered.
The one thing you have to give Cisco is they know how to market... in slides. That boring RFC document looks colorful, bright and full of promi$e when Cisco have turned into a marketing slide. It takes a lot of find the "boring" slides of some other vendors more appealing, as a solution. Mark.