[c-nsp] Extreme vs. Cisco

[Fetzer, Bryan]

I'm going to differentiate quite a bit from the various posts in this
thread and state some good things about Extreme's products. I want to
qualify my statements first and foremost; I used to be one of the
certified Cisco cronies. I wouldn't touch it or recommend it unless it
had a Cisco logo on it (unless I had no other recourse). 

I have since found the following to be true: 

1. EAPS is better than anything Cisco has on their switching platforms.
Period. If you do indeed need fast failover times at L2 have fun with
STP, you can have it. EAPS has proven over and over again in our
organization to work and work well, and it's EASY to setup to boot.
Cisco needs to address this with 802.17 RPR in their switching platforms
(which I have requested to our Cisco account team). We use EAPS to
assure that our SP VoIP network stays up. We test failover while we
initiate many calls and we never drop a call, nor is it even noticeable
that a "failure" occurred. 

We are also rolling out 10gbe EAPS in many places throughout our
network. We have one 10gbe metro ring right now across quite a large
distance. We are scheduled for 3-4 more 10gbe rings within the next few
months. 

We run EAPS and in the event of a failure, OSPF and/or BGP don't even
notice. That was a big concern of ours, and STP/RSTP just wasn't cutting
it. (this company used to be an ALL Cisco shop)

2. CLI. I used to absolutely HATE the Extreme CLI. At this point, now
that I've had a couple years to work with Extreme's switching platform,
unfamiliarity seems to be the KEY reason why I hated it so much. I now
find that when going between the various Cisco switches we have and the
various Extreme switches we have, I much prefer setting up ports and
"trunks" as Cisco loves to call them on our Extreme switches. This seems
to be reflected across the team of people I work with. All of us came
from the typical "Cisco background". 

We had a 48 port blade die in a Cisco 4510 the other day, and since for
some reason we didn't have an onsite spare, we had to throw in an
Extreme Summit switch for temporary purposes. I had 12-15 VLAN's
configured on a fresh Extreme summit throughout the 48 ports in around
10 minutes. It was THAT easy. 

3. Stability. All of our switches run, and run well, we haven't had any
issues with them. At my last job I ran full BGP tables on a pair BD's,
never had any issues there either. At the company I am currently at, we
do use them for mostly L2. On a few of our larger boxes we do run quite
a bit of L3 and don't have any issues.  
 
4. XOS. Extreme is going in the same "modular" OS direction that Juniper
has been. In the time I have used XOS I really do like it. If you are a
UNIX fan, you'll probably like a lot of the features of XOS

5. Website/Support. The website used to absolutely suck, and while it
has gotten a bit better, it is still really lacking. *hello, Extreme
reps... Are you listening?** My biggest complaint has always been the
lack of EXAMPLES, the CLI syntaxes are there in their full glory, but
GOOD examples aren't in a lot of cases. I will say this, with XOS
documentation, the config examples have gotten MUCH better. The support
itself has been great for us on most occasions, but I hate calling any
support team, I'll pretty much nitpick every possibility before I ever
call support, I don't care what company it is. 

6. Multicast. Never had a problem with it. We do run a lot of VoD stuff
that depends on it and all of our VoD equipment is plugged into Summit
or BD switches. 

All this being said I am still going for my CCIE, I plan on being a CCIE
with a good breadth of knowledge on many other platforms and the
advantages those other platforms *may have* over something similar from
Cisco. Juniper and Extreme have been a breath of fresh air for me
lately. 
I also don't want a pissing match here. I just wanted to be sure that
the other side of this issue had proper representation. You asked a
question on a forum that is dedicated to a specific vendor in a specific
environment. Surely a betting man would gamble on the foreseeable
outcome.