Fedora Users — Re: OT: ISPs: Linux's role nowadays

On 02/25/2010 12:46 AM, Michael Cronenworth wrote:

On 02/24/2010 10:33 PM, Marcel Rieux wrote:
Is this correct? Are there more explanations you can provide to make
the picture clearer?
  
Cisco has been allowed into the classroom in many high schools here in the USA. They teach you to use Cisco, and only Cisco, for all your networking needs. It's the only thing most IT people know about and the only vendor they will 'trust' all the way to their grave. Not that I agree with that. :) Juniper is a close second.

IT people usually have very lax budgets (at least the one's I've known) and can afford to blow $5k-$10k on a single router for a small department. The most coveted excuse for using Cisco over anything else is their [Cisco's] "instant" turn around to customer support problems. They [IT] could care less about Linux because they know nothing about it.

At the low end, performance differences between a "Linux box configured as a cheap router" and a
several $K Cisco/Juniper/Whatever router doing the same job are practically non-existent.

But the Linux box will likely require a little more baby-sitting, a little less "plug n play" that a comparable
router "solution". The cost of that babysitting, unfortunately, does need to be factored in.

At the high end, there's generally no comparison--for high-end routing, you *need* hardware-based routing
to keep up with the "fat pipes".

Funny story. In the lab at work, we have a Cisco switch, and a several $15.00 switches from a
"off shore" manufacturer. The $15.00 switches slightly edge out the $800.00 Cisco in switching latency
and jitter. Not by a huge margin, mind you, but it is rather funny that a consumer-grade $15.00 8-port
10/100 switch competes very favourably with a much more expensive one from a "big name".

-- 
Marcus Leech
Principal Investigator
Shirleys Bay Radio Astronomy Consortium
http://www.sbrac.org

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