[c-nsp] Brocade Vs Cisco

[Mark Tinka]

On Sunday, August 14, 2011 07:54:17 AM Ryan Finnesey wrote:

> If I have the option to engineer to our  requirements I
> would use cisco at the edge and Juniper at the core.

If you're now considering current offerings from both 
vendors, you would actually realize that aside from the most 
special of cases, it really doesn't matter who is used in 
the core or edge.

In the core, we've used both Juniper and Cisco with pretty 
much no difference. I'd pick a vendor based on small issues 
such as rack space and power utilization requirements, 
rather than price or performance as those are quite evenly 
matched these days. One area that could still tip the scales 
for us in the core is 10Gbps port density. Otherwise, no 
major differences.

In the edge, things get interesting. Juniper's MX line is 
certainly powerful, but is not without its challenges. We've 
had great successes, and failures. Cisco's ASR9000 is not 
bad either, and has caught up sufficiently feature-wise but 
still has a bit of a way to go. We've deployed both of these 
platforms in this role, and for the most part, are running 
as expected.

In essence, the core isn't such a big problem for us. We 
would be happy running a CRS, ASR9000, T4000 or MX960. The 
edge is more interesting, and in some cases, some vendors 
can be better than others, even though problems on the MX 
and ASR9000 are all fixable in the future. For us, the 
biggest issues to always consider in the edge are QoS and 
Multicast capabilities.

Cheers,

Mark.
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