[c-nsp] 6500 vs. 7600 revisited again

[Phil Mayers]

Tassos Chatzithomaoglou wrote:
>>
>> I note with concern that the Cisco product page lists the VSS as a 
>> different "product" to the base 6500. Ordinarily such a minor thing 
>> would not concern me, but as Gert has pointed out repeatedly, Cisco 
>> have made people very nervous about the 6500/7600 roadmap...
>>
>>
> 
> I've been watching all this conflict going on (and coming to the surface 
> very often on this list) and i was wondering ....Based on what facts did 
> cisco decide the seperation of the 6500/7600 platforms?
> 
> I'm one of the few (would cisco do that if we were many?) like you, who 
> didn't like this decision, but is there a possibility that there is 
> something we're missing that actually made cisco follow that direction?

Well, various people (myself included) have been briefed by their 
account teams.

I was briefed from a "6500 BU" perspective, others may be able to chime 
in but basically I was told the BUs want to go in different directions, 
and it was implied that the need to maintain 6500<->7600 compatibility 
was hampering their efforts.

It was also implied (bearing in mind I was talking to "a 6500 guy") that 
the push came more from the 7600 side of the fence. Specifically I get 
the impression the 7600 BU feel they are or will be outpaced in the 
"service provider" market if they don't innovate rapidly.

Basically the focus seems to be:

  6500 == enterprise & datacentre - high density, everything in hardware 
and best performance/line rate, support service modules for specific 
things e.g. ACE, FWSM, WISM

  7600 == service provider - lower density, high performance but not 
line-rate, high-touch features like PPPoX termination, mac accounting, etc

Put like that, the decision doesn't seem so unreasonable. But...

The main problem as far as I can see is that Cisco have made (have had 
to make) decisions about what constitutes "enterprise" (6500) versus 
"service provider" (7600) and those decisions do not always overlap with 
all customers.

Example: some service providers might consider re-selling virtual 
firewalls on an FWSM an SP, not enterprise feature.

Example: some enterprises consider 5 minute bootup times and 600MHz CPUs 
on their core routers a bit 1990s...

An ancillary problem, and one which draws much of the ire on this list, 
is that there still exists an overlap between the 7600 and 6500 BU, and 
that they are now *actively* competing with each other in those areas. 
People who happen to need features in those areas cannot get a straight 
answer out of either BU because no-one wants to lose business (because 
Cisco are based on commission)

A final problem is that neither BU seems to have done particularly well 
in their first "solo" IOS fork. The phrase "bug riddled crap" springs to 
mind...

Certainly Cisco must (should) have had numbers demonstrating the split 
was reasonable, and it's possible the group of people on this list, 
myself included, who dislike the split are a self-selecting minority.

It doesn't mean I have to like it though.