HP Accuses Cisco of Diverting Data Center Standard 47
alphadogg writes "Networking rivals HP and Cisco have abandoned their common ground in data center switching, with HP accusing Cisco of diverting an IEEE standard and Cisco insisting that customers drove the change. At issue are two as-yet unratified standards in the IEEE for data center switching that were being defined in concert but are now diverging: IEEE 802.1Qbg and 802.1Qbh."
Cisco Vs. HP (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly, when push comes to shove, who is going to defer to HP over Cisco when it comes to networking? Despite the obvious trolls and flames against Cisco because they are so big, as a network engineer who deals with many different vendors everyday on a huge enterprise level network, I long for the day of an all Cisco environment. Why? Because Cisco stuff just works. All of our main components are Cisco: Firewalls, Wireless controllers and access points, and high-level layer-3 switches and routers. Before we were mostly Cisco, there were nothing but problems, including compatibility on the hardware and protocol level and just general failures of hardware. Since the move to a mostly Cisco network we have less than 50% of the issues we had before. Perhaps it "just works" only because Cisco uses some proprietary protocols and such, but who cares when it all works so well?
Our longest running devices on the network (been up for over 800 consecutive days) are Cisco. We have Juniper, Enterasys, HP, 3Com, Linksys Business-class, IBM, and several other vendors equipment on our network in one form or another, and the only one we never have an issue with is Cisco. I don't think this is coincidence.
So why would anyone go with or defer to HP when it comes to networking? Anyone who has sat in a room with HP delivering a marketing presentation will know they claim "We are better than Cisco because _______" all day long. Problem is, they aren't. And anyone who has configured an HP device from the CLI will tell you that they are so similar to Cisco in terms of the feel it goes well beyond flattery with how much they model after Cisco. Problem is, HP has the same problem that most other networking vendors have: they are still lacking when compared to Cisco. Both in support, quality, and reliability.
Perhaps someone has had bad experiences with Cisco, and that turned them off to them for life, but most people who work in networking everyday will tell you they'd rather be on a Cisco device than any other.
Re:Cisco Vs. HP (Score:5, Informative)
I would agree with you for networking, but not firewalling. As someone who's managing > 100 Cisco firewalls, let me assure you that they're not the perfection you make them out to be...there are plenty of weird bugs/problems with the ASAs, just like with any other vendor. If you want to see just how broken they can be, ask for a detailed explanation of just how their active/active firewall solution works. (Hint: map out the packet flow when a packet arrives at the second context for a flow that started on the first context..and then be horrified at how they route packets internally.)