[c-nsp] ASR9902 fpd upgrade

[Saku Ytti]

On Thu, 21 Dec 2023 at 09:21, Hank Nussbacher via cisco-nsp
<cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net> wrote:

> It used to be TAC was a main selling card of Cisco vs competitors.  Not
> any longer :-(

Don't remember them ever being relatively or absolutely good.

Having one support channel for all requests doesn't work, because >99%
cases are useless cases from people who didn't do their homework and
are just wasting resources, so everyone optimises the process around
dealing with those, which makes the experience feel horrible to the
legitimate support cases.

But vendors sell at premium cost different experience, Cisco calls it
HTTS, it's not necessarily that you get better people, but you get
named people who will quickly learn that the previous optimisation
point doesn't work with you, because your cases are legitimate, so
they don't perform the useless volleys in hope that the customer
realises their error and doesn't come back, which is good strategy as
it works often.

Unfortunately HTTS is quite expensive and it feels backwards, that the
people who are reporting legitimate problems in your product also have
to pay more to get support. It often feels like no one buys Ciscos or
Junipers, but leases them, as the support contracts are so outrageous,
and you can't go without the support contracts.

I'm not blaming Cisco or any other vendor, I think this outcome is a
market driven fact. If I try to imagine that someone releases a new
NOS, which works as well as Windows or Linux, in that the OS almost
never is the reason why basic functionality of your product is broken,
then I can imagine lot of my customers would choose not to buy this
lease-level support contract, and I'd be out of business. Market
requires NOS' to be of really poor quality.
-- 
  ++ytti