Your own corporate network- what would you run?

Mrock4

Figured I'd get some input from others, as I got into a discussion with a co-worker, and it made me wonder what other IT professionals thought.


The $14m network that we manage is probably 85% foundry at the moment, and we're in the process of trying to migrate to 100% foundry, as the contract with cisco is done with..so we're slowly phasing out our cisco gear. I'm not saying cisco is going away anytime soon (obviously not), but that in our network, they prefer foundry.

So the question is, given your own network, what vendor would you prefer, Cisco, Foundry, Juniper, 3com?? Or a mix?? And why?

I myself, for a mostly data-only network, would select Foundry due to the slightly more friendly CLI...such as show commands from anywhere in the config..that and the foundry equipment seems a bit more expandable, such as the BigIron 15000, 8000's, etc. That being said, I haven't been exposed to the higher end cisco gear, so I might just be ignorant on that one. On a sidebar, I hate the fact that you don't see which ports are trunked by looking at the running-config of a foundry (as opposed to seeing "switchport mode trunk" on a cisco..I usually have to do a show vlan on a foundry, and find which ports are tagged).

For a mixture of data, and VOIP, I would select Cisco because from what I've seen, they're a more well-rounded company than Foundry in that sense.

I'm only speaking of the two, because that's all I've been exposed to. Just curious what the pro's think..

sexion8

Mrock4 wrote:

I myself, for a mostly data-only network, would select Foundry due to the slightly more friendly CLI...such as show commands from anywhere in the config..that and the foundry equipment seems a bit more expandable, such as the BigIron 15000, 8000's, etc. That being said, I haven't been exposed to the higher end cisco gear, so I might just be ignorant on that one. On a sidebar, I hate the fact that you don't see which ports are trunked by looking at the running-config of a foundry (as opposed to seeing "switchport mode trunk" on a cisco..I usually have to do a show vlan on a foundry, and find which ports are tagged).

For a mixture of data, and VOIP, I would select Cisco because from what I've seen, they're a more well-rounded company than Foundry in that sense.

I like Foundry, I have some BigIrons in house and some in my lab shhh... What I don't like is the cost per port. They've gone insane. I've slowly been migrating over to the EX's from Juniper which are pretty sweet and the savings are phenomenal. Cisco is Cisco, you either love it or you hate it...

As for VoIP, Cisco blows period. I work at a VoIP carrier and we provide managed VoIP services for clients (think Vonage for business I guess). For VoIP I prefer a mixture of vendors. For example supposing I had a small to mid sized business of say 300 users. I'd likely go with PBXnSIP for their PBX and Snom's for their phones, Polycom Soundpoints for conference rooms. The routing/switching infrastructure for say a T1 would be an Adtran 12xx POE switch which does routing. Adtran is a sleeper, giant in the making if they played their cards right.

Now say a mid-sized business, and I ran the network... At the core would be Juniper ERX 705's, with M7i's at the branches. For switching I would choose Juniper's EX's. For an SBC, I would choose AcmePacket since Audiocodes is stepping out of the game... PBX would be (again) PBXnSIP and likely to keep things pretty I would go with Cisco 7960's for phones, and a Lifestyle for videoconferencing...


http://infiltrated.net/7960poc.jpg (pwnd 7960)
http://infiltrated.net/Mar2520074.jpg (I keep 7960's @ home)
http://infiltrated.net/nCite.jpg (my SBC's)
http://infiltrated.net/rhinochan2.jpg (Rhino and Adtran channel banks)
http://infiltrated.net/rhinochan1.jpg (Rhino and Adtran channel banks)
http://infiltrated.net/rhinos.jpg (Rhino and Adtran channel banks)
http://www.infiltrated.net/AugDeskPix/IMG31337-64.jpg (Juniper SSG's)
http://www.infiltrated.net/AugDeskPix/outsideOffice/IMG31337-78.jpg (Juniper EX switches in the lab)
http://www.infiltrated.net/AugDeskPix/outsideOffice/IMG31337-85.jpg (Foundry FastIron in the lab)
http://www.infiltrated.net/AugDeskPix/outsideOffice/IMG31337-9.jpg (my paperweight Cisco 7971)

I have a lot of junk to play with when I have free time. I just order two Juniper STRM's to play with until I get bored with those too. I have so much crap in my house as well now that I think about it. Anyway... you couldn't pay me to make an all Cisco shop. I've deal with CCM, CME for some time and it doesn't impress me much. I've made frankenstein Asterisk boxes that have withstood more stuff and have had greater success then I've had with Cisco.

# uptime && asterisk -rx "show version"
23:54:04 up 478 days, 11:20, 2 users, load average: 0.10, 0.07, 0.02
-- Remote UNIX connection
Asterisk 1.4.5 built by root @ xxxx on a i686 running Linux on 2007-12-11 02:42:19 UTC


# asterisk -rx "sip show peers"|tail -n 1
337 sip peers [307 online , 30 offline]

*Doesn't include IAX peers either or trunks... Running Linux in HA for failover... I'm averaging about 23Mpbs in VoIP traffic alone But keep in mind, I also managed 40+ PBX's of all types (Avaya, Nortel, Cisco, you name it, we've run it, Altigens and the list goes on and on)

Diminutive

Nothing but Windows 2003 running RRAS, yeah babay!

Mmartin_47

IBM system z/10 mixed with a 2003 environment.

Are mainframes even still used today? Or are they being replaced by more advanced servers? My pops works in a datacenter, used to have 3 mainframes now 1. Heh they have everything else you name it. StorageTek (PowderHorn) tape silos, AS/400, cisco routers and switches, HP servers, Dell servers, IBM servers and tape libraries, as well as Hitachi.

Yeah I'd probably toss the above in just to make it look pretty, lol.

networker050184

sexion8 wrote:

The routing/switching infrastructure for say a T1 would be an Adtran 12xx POE switch which does routing. Adtran is a sleeper, giant in the making if they played their cards right.

Adtran? You have got to be kidding me!

I work for a VoIP carrier as well and yes, Adtran is a cheap VoIP router/switch solution, but they are not to the point with their support or quality of AOS to say I'd want them in my network. I definitely wouldn't call them a sleeper. A lot of my time is spent implementing work around for Adtran bugs. They are still being sold like crazy because they are a cheap solution. I know Cisco and all vendors have bugs, but I have never seen so many software bugs before I started working with Adtrans.

To each their own I guess...

Oh, and they call their techs Adtran Aces which is cool though so they get a few points there

rbutturini

I still like Cisco, except for VoIP...Mitel is a better solution I think, but that's just me. We all love what we know. I just think Cisco, while expensive, is powerful, and because it's so widely deployed you rarely get into an "oh crap" situation you can't either find help on the Internet with or that their support (which is still quite good despite going downhill a bit lately) can solve. Plus the equipment is highly upgradeable and adaptable to meet many different needs. But that's just my two cents.

sexion8

networker050184 wrote:

but I have never seen so many software bugs before I started working with Adtrans.

To each their own I guess...

Oh, and they call their techs Adtran Aces which is cool though so they get a few points there

You must have a cruddy reseller. Who do you buy from? I have direct contacts with them and I barely have issues with them. Again though, if you took note, they're (Adtran) mentioned for small businesses. Try getting a 20 person client to buy a Cisco... Like trying to squeeze water out of a rock

sexion8

rbutturini wrote:

Mitel is a better solution I think, but that's just me

Man, I loathe Mitel. Dan York who is a cool ass VoIP Security peer with me @ VoIPSA lead their security efforts once upon a time. I could go back to my Skype records to count how many times I cursed his company out but it would take a long time Seriously though... Mitel... Not my cup of tea.

GT-Rob

I think rbutturini has a good point, that we love what we know.

Almost 90% of my exposure is to Cisco, so I would probably keep it that way. Although I do recognize their short comings, and I think a mixed environment is the way to go.


I would also depend on the requirements. Power, reliability, cost, etc.