[c-nsp] MTBF for Cisco products

[e ninja]

Ted,

You've raised some excellent points. Check out the multiven dossier below,
it exposes these OEM warranty scams in greater detail.

http://www.multiven.com/dossier.php
http://www.multiven.com/PDF/Multiven_Dossier.pdf - pdf

-ninja

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Snippet....

*Overview*

Over the past two decades, the networking equipment industry has experienced
rapid growth and expansion as businesses worldwide continue to make
substantial network infrastructure investments. Despite this industry
attaining maturity, it remains riddled with numerous malpractices
reminiscent of old-world cartel-like behavior where corporations collude to
increase their collective profits through rehearsed messaging, price fixing
and other restrictive practices.

There are hundreds of companies that manufacture networking hardware and
software with larger players like Cisco, Nortel Networks, Juniper Networks,
Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya and HP dominating this market and setting the tone for
the overarching trends that prevail.

Unfortunately, networking equipment manufacturers (NEMs) continue to
fraudulently extort billions of dollars annually from their customers by
propagating the perception that customers that have paid for software
licenses have to also pay additional fees to obtain fixes to defects found
in such software.

This file of the Multiven dossier will examine these and other unethical
malpractices in the networking equipment industry with the hope of educating
customers and industry observers alike of their rights and hopefully
effecting due corrective action.

*The Myths and the Malpractices*

   - The 90-day Software Warranty
   - Mandatory-Maintenance-Contract-for-Software-Bug-Fixes
   - Inherent-Software-Bugs
   - Non-Transferable-Software-Licenses
   - Denial-of-Product-Documentation-for-New-Equipment

* The Proposed Solutions*

   - Free Lifetime Software Support Warranty*
   - Sell Software a-la-carte.
   - Transferable Software Licenses
   - Proactive Software Updates.

*Conclusion*

The aforementioned malpractices have helped network equipment manufacturers
skim billions of dollars away from their customers fraudulently over the
past decades by forcing them to pay for bug fixes in proprietary software
that customers purchase. These companies have built a financial and business
model around maintaining the face-value legitimacy of paying for software
maintenance.

Imagine paying $100 for an operating system software with 100 embedded
features and you enable 10 of those features immediately. After 18 months of
use, you enable the 11th feature only to find out that it does not work as
documented or worse still, it causes your network to suffer an outage
thereby impacting your company$B!l(Bs revenue, productivity and customer
satisfaction amongst other concerns. Is it fair for the manufacturer to make
you pay to fix this defect? The answer is NO. The $100 you initially paid
was for 100 features that were expected to work as documented, not for 100
bugs.

It is time to put an end to this industry-wide malpractice. Customers
worldwide should wake up and demand their fundamental software right to a
no-fee, no-strings-attached lifetime support warranty for all proprietary
network equipment operating system software before renewing their support
contracts or purchasing new hardware and software.