ChrisB

Just got a spec to build a solution to.

Multiple floors, Gigabit fibre backbone between floors, about 150 Ethernet devices in total - nothing too unusual or huge.

There's the old saying 'nobody got fired for buying IBM'. Can you sub Cisco for IBM these days?

If you're an IT Manager, would you expect to have a Cisco solution offered? If somebody proposed a solution using another brand, would you seriously consider it? Support options including 24x7 tech support, 4 hour on-site engineer cover, so not a Mickey Mouse unknown brand either.

ChrisB

Actually designing it is fairly easier.

Just if you could have a solution that is 50% cheaper then a Cisco...

David_Wallis

We use Lucent & Cisco..

What about HP Procurve or similar?

David

SiCotty

I would want to know why they are significantly cheaper and where they are going to be cutting corners. The low end Cisco switches are very competative on price so is it the support they are going to be week on, ask for a few references as it never hurts.

Si

WillieF

For my more 'cost effective' solutions I use either NetGear or Allied Telesyn.

But nobody gets fired for having a Cisco or Avaya ( I do like the Cajun stuff) solution.

David_Wallis

We have the cajun stuff.... we also have the msh or msl something or other.... half a cabinet job... getting replaced with cisco soon..

David

what would scooby do

we have 600 users on enterasys stuff here, across 15 floors, two buildings connected by a walkway. Gigabit fibre backbone and to all server class devices, 100meg to desktops. Never had a failure, never had slowness on the network.

dsmith

If you want routers i believe you need a very good reason not to go Cisco. For switching at the desktop level then I dont believe theres the same feeling that you must go Cisco.

Some managers (with the budget) will like to see Cisco, others will feel rightly or wrongly that its a big name for the sake of it. I currently use almost all Cisco but it tends to be data centre type stuff rather than desktop infrstructure. For support reasons I'd need to very good reason to go elsewehere. We have some cabletrons whcih actually do some bits much better than the equiavlent Ciscos but are much harder to support as they're diferent to so much else we have.

Deano

WillieF

Ozzy that wouldn't have been PSU's on the AT kit would it? We sell the Black Diamond stuff and have a couple of PSU's go out although I blame crap power out at the location.

ozzy

wasn't that an IBM saying I haven't seen anyone fired for the wrong brand, but I've seen them leave when it's been the totally wrong solution.

Your biggest problem may not be the product, but the reseller or consultant who advise you on what you need. I've seen people spending 5-figure sums on well-known brands only to have it all ripped out when it just wasn't up to the job.

They should have spent the extra cash in the first place and did it right.

Having worked in the Reseller chain for 6yrs, the biggest hassle was being able to support users and products. The Engineers were great, but either the weren't trained properly, had to underspec kit due to "not being competitve" or there was nevere enough of us to deal with customers properly.

You could buy the most expensive and greatest bit of Cisco kit, but if you use a cr@p reseller who can't back it up, then you and your company are going to suffer.

And the Directors might use you as a scapegoat

Stefan

ozzy

Willie,

Yeah a few PSU's, although we did have a few dodgy ports that was screwing-up our Cisco router.

Stefan

WillieF

As a reseller I know providing support and the support we get is only as good as the relationship with the manufacturer.

We as a general rule don't sell anything we don't use in house.

SiCotty

You can sub Cisco for this, you would probably only need a few 24/48 port switches with a central switch being used as the aggregator. Put another switch of the aggregator for servers etc. You could if you want have two aggregation switches to give you a bit more redundancy if you wanted. You can get switches from Cisco that will power IP phones and the Aironet access points but these are only worth the investment if you plan on doing this at a latter date.

We have both wirless access and IP phones and they area great.

Simon

[Edited by SiCotty - 9/12/2002 10:43:24 AM]

ozzy

Yes, but more often than not it's because everyone and their granny uses them and not because it's best.

You need to look at the spec of the hardware being offered, especially the internal backplane throughput. So, say you have two switches with a fibre gigabit connection in between. Fine, but if those switches can only handle 100Mbps internally, then the switch could get easily overloaded and become the bottleneck.

It's usually the internal switching speed that drops dramtically with the price. Just because one as 48 10/100Mpbs ports and a Gigabit one, doesn't mean it's the same as the Cisco one (or any other) that's twice the price. The other expensive one may well have a 40GB internal switching capacity.

I've personally used Enterasys (formally Cabletron) Cisco, HP, 3Com and Allied Telesyn kit. I spent more time ripping out the cheap stuff and replacing it with the good Cisco kit (or in much larger installs) Enterasys.

The company I'm working for now use a mixture of Cisco and Allied Telesyn. The Cisco kit is about 3 times more expensive for the same spec of switch, but I've had 2 Allied Telesyn's fail in the 18mths I've been here. No probs with Cisco, so that must tell you something.

Of course, someone will say that they've had no probs with the AT kit (or any other) and some will say that their Cisco kit is sh!te.

If money isn't a problem, go for Enterasys, it'll blow the Cisco kit out of the water (but it's damn expensive).

Stefan

[Edited by ozzy - 9/12/2002 11:38:19 AM]