[c-nsp] Brocade VS Cisco

[Bradley Williamson]

Does anyone have any horror stories or gotcha's  concerning Brocade? What about success stories?

We are looking at Brocade, Cisco, and Juniper for a couple of upcoming projects and I am familiar with both Cisco and Juniper, but not so much with Brocade. We have a few of their small switches in our network, but that’s about the extent of my experience.

We want to build an MPLS core capable of delivering triple-play services and as part of that, we will be building our a MetroE network to provide ethernet backhaul for mobile providers and also deliver L2VPN and L3VPN services to our business customers.

I am a little skeptical of Brocade. I just do not understand how they can provide the performance they claim at half the price of the other guys.

Any insight/advice would be appreciated.

Brad