[j-nsp] MX104 capabilities question

[Saku Ytti]

On 9 June 2016 at 15:54, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka at seacom.mu> wrote:

> But is the IP and MPLS code mature enough for real-world use?

It's getting there, customer by customer. It's not there for me. I
expect Arista to be serious player in SP segment in a <2 years.

As Arista is still controlled by owners who work there on daily basis,
they can do things well, instead of seeking immediate gratification
while adding technological debt. And none of them are in their first
rodeo, are financially independent so I don't think they're interested
in doing big exit, I think they're solely motivated in building great
company and a great product. How long this issue will persist is
anyone's guess.

They do something quite different than JNPR or CSCO. I think
programming language is important, and I think C is terrible language,
because it's very hard to write quality code on.
Arista isn't really using C, mostly C++ and good portion of that is
machine generated from their own proprietary state description
language. They also heavily unit test and automate black-box testing.

I think they are fundamentally able to produce less buggy code than
JNPR or CSCO. They are doing some of the classic mistakes, like
insisting market that they have single image like JNPR highlighted as
big competitive advantage over CSCO back in the day. But they'll need
to get rid of this message when moving to 64b or then they need to
screw people running older HW not capable for 32b.

I wish someone would do something even more novel, like create full
routing suite in Erlang. But from what we have now in the market, I
think Arista is most innovative.

-- 
  ++ytti