From: Andrey Khomyakov Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 11:36 AM To: nanog group Subject: Re: Is Cisco equpiment de facto for you?
There have been awfully too many time when Cisco TAC would just say that since the problem you are trying to troubleshoot is between Cisco and VendorX, we can't help you. You should have bought Cisco for both sides. I had that happen when I was troubleshooting LLDP between 3750s and Avaya phones, TACACS between Cisco and tac_plus daemon, link bundling between juniper EX and Cisco, some obscure switching issues between CAT and Procurves and other examples like that just don't recall them anymore.
On the other hand, the other vendors are generally willing to bend over backwards and sort out interoperability issues and often have technical resources that are just as experienced on the Cisco gear as the Cisco techs are. And while Cisco might have at one time done the "you should have bought Cisco (click)" act, I don't get that impression these days as more networks have equipment from mixed vendors for very specific parts. There are reasons why one might choose to purchase gear from different vendors in a "best of breed" approach. One might have load balancers from A10 or Citrix, a firewall from Juniper or Palo Alto Networks, access switches from Arista, core gear from Brocade and maybe even a couple of Cisco boxes here and there where they make sense. Having one single vendor for no reason other than to simply ease troubleshooting might be a valid reason in some networks but doesn't make sense in others. If you don't have the technical resources to sort out issues in-house, sure, it might make sense to let the vendor do it all and in that case you will need a network from one vendor. Different vendors have different things they do very well. A network might want to leverage those good aspects in their network design. It basically comes down to the type of service you are offering and how much money you have. For a "best of breed" network, you might have to pay a little more for in-house talent. For a homogeneous network, you might sacrifice performance in some areas for savings on talent. It just depends on what is important to you. No one vendor, in my experience, makes the very best gear at the very best price in every portion of the network. That isn't Cisco specific, it goes for practically all vendors.