Cisco Routing technology vs others
 

I am just wondering, how come cisco routers are popular compre to others. What kind of technology they use it for their routers and swithces. Is any special algorithm they use it?.

Thanks
Sympton

I don't know all the in and outs but one thing that is very important is that they are known for been reliable.

Cisco are popular because they setup training and certification very early so it was easy for companies to find support staff.

Cisco has been around for a very long time, longer than most and have proven themselves so that when you get a cisco, you know it's going to work the way it's supposed to and you're not going to have very many problems with it.

Well, don't get me wrong, I'm very fond of ciscos, but I think that lately ciscos -stopped- working the way they are supposed to, and having problems became normal.

How many of you out there had to deal with CEF issues on a regular basis? Have you ever been told by the TAC that your interface card failed because of Alpha Particles? Who's been working on ciscos for years and HASN'T accidentally access-listed themselves off the router? Not to mention Cisco releases bug alerts on a weekly basis. And of course, EVERYONE knows cisco's answer to any problem they can't explain - "You need to upgrade."

These and more are the reasons cisco is slipping right now, and juniper has surged into a 30 percent core router market share.

Anyone who has conquered the steep learning curve of JunOS (made more difficult by having a cisco-oriented mind) has realized just how exponentially far Juniper has surpassed Cisco in almost every aspect of the core router market. Your configuration is error-checked and loaded all at once instead of one line at a time; the plethora of available command options can be entered in any order after you've reached a certain hierarchy (i.e. "ping 1.1.1.1 count 100 source 1.1.1.2" and "ping source 1.1.1.2 count 100" BOTH work), there is an onboard Unix shell, redundant synchronized routing engines, triple-redundant switching fabric, redundant backplanes, etc. etc.

It always comes back to price on the Cisco-Juniper debate, because as great as a Lexus is, most people really only NEED a Ford. It should be noted, however, that with a Juniper you get more than what you pay for.

But where I'm going with this is this: If Juniper can destroy them this badly in the core router market, it can also be done in the distribution, access, and switching markets.

Cisco has become a slow-moving behemoth, and I certainly hope that vendors like Juniper will cause Cisco to ditch their current slothful faceless-corporation style and drop some of their deep-pocket money into R&D that will revolutionize routing...again.

</flamecisco> ;)

Cisco has been around for so long...
Cisco is not focused on one thing such as routing or switching..
But networking in general is their entire concern.
They have been buying out companys and taking their technologies.
Cisco has always been a big part in new/upcoming networking technologies (Currently Docsis 3.0)
Juniper is somewhat taking the core routing aspect, but many people respect cisco for the reputation they have had..
That they will not switch over..
Juniper Junkie, I somewhat understand partially what you are saying.
Currently I am studying from the Sybex JNCIA book and it seems to much more interesting to me then any of my current cisco books.
Just because of the way the Juniper platform lays itself out in the book.

The Cisco mantra is "It's a feature, not a bug!". However, it's what everyone uses, so you can probably find someone to help you get around its bugs and limitations, and get some combination of Cisco gear to do exactly what you need to have done. The final solution is never elegant, but Cisco devices are the defacto "toolbox" most people work from.

For every particular task, there is at-least one other company that makes a better box (although the meaning of "better" varies quite a bit: scalable? cheaper? etc.) But that isn't enough to push Cisco out of its market dominance.