HP A-series, H3C, Huawei and their capabilities in real-life
Hi list Does anyone have (or know somebody who has) real-life experience of HP A-series (former Huawei and H3C) high-end routers in service provider environment? From the specs they look very good (both features and performance) but the specs don't tell everything and nothing can replace real-life experience. The features I'm interested in include (not in any specific order) - v4 and v6 routing - BGP (full feed) - OSPF and IS-IS - MPLS(-TE) P/PE functionality (RSVP, L3VPN, VPLS) For example this box http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/products/routers/HP_A8800_Router_Series/inde... Any info or pointers greatly appreciated. Rgds, Mark
My apologies for using gmail. Company policy prohibits the use of corporate email and identity. Nobody has heard nothing? Hear no evil… ;) What we basically have at this point is vendor specifications, sales talk and rumors that big boys have built large networks using these boxes (or predecessors of them, i.e. Huawei) especially in Asia and former Soviet countries. There are also some western references such as BT. With BT the references only mention Huawei, not HP. Does Huawei still sell (wired) routers under their own brand? Or is the BT reference network consisting purely of mobile stuff, (UMTS etc) and does not include traditional wired infrastructure (IP/BGP/MPLS routers)? Or is the HP's acquisition so new that the references are only mentioning Huawei? This resembles detective's work :) The price of these boxes is quite attractive, but there are lots of buts. For example, how much do they have in common with Huawei boxes? Traditionally HP networking gear excluding basic pizzabox switches has not been very convincing. Even comment like "they suck, stay away from them" would be very valuable.
On Sat, 17 Sep 2011, Mark Smith wrote:
Does Huawei still sell (wired) routers under their own brand?
Yes. See NE40E/NE80E/NE5000E.
The price of these boxes is quite attractive, but there are lots of buts. For example, how much do they have in common with Huawei boxes? Traditionally HP networking gear excluding basic pizzabox switches has not been very convincing.
My opinion is that the H3C stuff from 5 years ago is not generally good. I don't know about their current gen. Huawei current gear is decent, they're worth testing. If you like them they're as you say, available at a generally good price point. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se
participants (2)
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Mark Smith
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Mikael Abrahamsson