Cisco and Kingston charge what their markets will bear. Memory comes in
two basic flavors, SIMM'ed by the memory manufacturer and SIMM'd by 3rd
party. Stuff from the manufacuturer is generally interchangable no matter
who you're buying it from, 3rd party stuff can vary.
There are a large number of parameters that define whether or not a
particular memory design *should* work in an application, Cisco goes
to a lot of trouble to "qualify" particular manufacturer's part numbers
to their spec's such that they don't generate problems in the field.
Kingston may work from the same kind of specs and also do in-system
functional testing, with the idea that their parts will actually work
when installed.
Generic memory is usually a paper cross-reference match, you can more
easily run into memory that "passes" on somebody's SIMM tester, but
doesn't work (reliably) in your router.
It boils down to a question of risk - if you have a vendor that you like
and who will at least exchange non-functional memory, then you can get
a lot of $125.99 memory for $5000 and walk away smiling. OTOH, if it
craps out a couple of weeks later after you've shipped to the router to
some remote location you may not have saved anything.
Generally I look for memory that's listed as "Cisco router memory" from
a vendor who's done well by us before, only been burned once or twice,
the cases I remember were 72-pin SIMMS that didn't work in a 3600 but
eventually ended up in VIP's, and a 128M DIMM that died after a few
days in a 7206VXR...
George
> From: "Steve Yingst \(LMF Staff\)" <runner@lmf.net>
> Cc: <cisco-nsp@puck.nether.net>
> Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2000 11:59:16 -0400
> Subject: [nsp] Cisco 3660 Memory
> To: cisco-nsp@puck.nether.net
>
> We're running a Cisco 3661 router with 128 Megs of RAM in it and would like
> to bump it up to the max of 256 Megs. I checked at Kingston and there list
> price is around $2,500. Cisco appeared to be around $5,000 for it and then
> I went to Crucial and they have it listed for $125.99 I've used Crucial
> memory before with great success. I also found some off brand listed at
> about $200.00 So I'm wondering if there is a reasoning behind the wide
> price range and will the crucial memory work?
>
> Steve
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