husycisco wrote:
Thanks for the heads up jon, been long time, hope you are doing fine. Winston got what I mean actually. Everyone thanks for your valuable inputs
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Regarding the device they are using now, try copying an huge file between gigabit-equipped servers on different VLANs. Perhaps, throw some ACL in there too. Compare time to the same copy made between servers in the same vlan.
Then, try having a disk crash on that box and see what you are left with"
This statement moves our discussion to another topic, probably called "Router-on-a-stick. Should we consider doing? or not?". Plus, buffering and queing that occur due to the bad nature of R-O-A-S would most probably take place in RAMs not disks. Anyway whaever happens behind the scenes, I am definitely against router on a stick, I also answer questions here and this is how a NetPro thinks. Lets come to the real discussion, which is "But this forum is titled "NetPro", and as such we try to remain."
Lets forget about the name Netasq, its just another firm like Fortigate or any xxx that runs on top of BSD. It is a matter of BSD versus IOS.
We are a BPL ISP with 1000+ clients. Objective is simple. 32 VLANs sometimes more depending on campus, they all have to be just NATed for Internet connection. No inter-vlan routing required.
BSD does it, price is **** CPU util %5
IOS cant, CPU %100, price is 2K
One Network admin is a CCNP CCSP Netpro. Agrees to pay 2K and no solution.
Other admin is a non-cisco guy. Agrees to pay 1K or less to a BSD platform, and everything works like a charm
Countries import CEOs that are good on savings and can survive in this period of economy.
Unemployment is %10 in USA only
Now as such we try to remain?
If Cisco worked, either better or worse than BSD, I could have said that "This is Cisco, the industry leader with its proprietary Operating system" and earn a point. Its not the discussion of BSD does and IOS is worse, it is BSD does and IOS crashes.
With years of Cisco experience of mine, I dont mind whatever the real answer is, my answer is "This is a bug, should be easily solved"
It could be a bug but then again it could just be that the BSD box performs this specific set of tasks more efficiently than a Cisco router. I think that can be a problem on these forums sometimes in that we all work with Cisco and so perhaps unwittingly sometimes are not prepared to be too critical of their products.
Cisco make very good networking products but they are not necessarily the best at what they do nor are they the cheapest. I don't accept the idea that if you use Cisco that is a professional solution but if you use BSD then it isn't. As a network designer i was often having to evaluate Cisco against other vendors and as often as not the other product would be as good if not better in terms of performance/features/cost. Nine times out of ten though we would still go with Cisco for the following reasons -
1) Support within the company - I haven't used Netasq, altho i am familiar with Unix, but adding another vendors box into the mix means additional support overheads.
2) Existing investement - can be a bit of a catch 22 this one but if you have invested in CiscoWorks etc.. for managing your network adding non-Cisco devices can become quite a headache
3) Support from Cisco via TAC, these forums, their website etc. - just the amount of information on their website is very impressive in terms of tech docs for just about any scenario
4) Future proofing - Cisco are not going to fold in the next 12 months, or at least we should all hope not or we will be looking for alternative work That's an important factor to take into account altho obviously this applies to the likes of Juniper etc.
5) Size of network. Last place i worked had over 20000 users spread across the whole of the UK. With this sort of setup introducing a new vendor can be very time consuming. Didn't mean we didn't do it though.
Basically if the device did what we wanted of it we would tend to buy Cisco. If another vendors porducts did the same but had another 10 features, if we didn't need them then it was still Cisco.
But without a doubt Cisco do not make the best of everything. They still cannot, for example, support true clustered firewalls with the best they can do being active/active contexts although this is nowhere near the same. It's just a trade off between functionality and all the other costs involved.
Jon
