Cisco Vs Foundry Vs Juniper Vs whatever

[RadiclDreamer]

We are a medium sized hospital that has been cisco from day one. Its what we know and love, but being that we are building a new facility we are looking at other vendors. We are looking for some bullet points that illustrate the pros and cons of each vendor. Do anyone of you know if something like this exists? If not, care to drop a few talking points of why or why not stay with Cisco. Cost is obviously always an issue, but reliability trumps all being that a dropped connection can adversely affect patient care.

We currently run some 6509's at the core and 2960/3500XL throughout the building. The RFP is getting ready to go out and I'd like to have some ammo to fight for (or if need be) against any given vendor.

Spidey, I'm sure you can shed some light

Thanks!

 

[spidey07]

I'd see what the RFPs come back with in terms of design and models. Everyone I've ever done they all come back at about the same price. Last I looked Juniper doesn't have any lan switches, but their OS is pretty nice. Been a while since touched foundry but they had some really nice statistical gathering and traffic pattern recognition to shut down worms or port scanning.

Cisco is cisco and their new 6500 supervisor (look up VSS) and 10 gig modules are pretty nice. Allows you to cross chassis etherchannel and have super high availability and sub second failover times. I like the 3750s a lot for this feature alone. 1252 access points are pretty nice as well and their wireless solution is very easy to manage.

Get them to sweeten the deal with a whole bunch of training (if you switch or just want cisco training), they all can normally give that away. 50% or more off Cisco list product price is good.

 

[cmetz]

Juniper has LAN switches. They're well priced and run JunOS (different binaries than the routers though). They are based on commodity silicon and probably don't have as good a feature set as a cat. Note that Juniper doesn't really believe in L3 switches, so while they may have L3 switching it's not really the way that they want you to do things, they want you to buy a router to do routing. Their switches are a relatively new product and maybe not a good choice on the maturity front.

Juniper's routers are rock solid and I highly recommend them from a technical perspective. IOS 12.4 is a disaster. Unfortunately, your odds of being able to hire a random person off the street that knows how to work with JunOS aren't good, while it's good for IOS. So that is a real consideration too.

I personally dislike the cat 6500 series. They've just burned me too many times with excessive failures, bugs, and standard Cisco under-engineering. And I also dislike the fact that there's always a new Sup module out that fixes every problem that ever was and ever will be this time (unlike those Sups you upgraded to in the past, which only fixed a couple of problems and maybe created a few new ones). The Cat 6500 series is Cisco's cash cow, highly overpriced for what they are, but at least with the volume they move it's common gear and not too broken.

3750 series and 3550 series are good switches. If cost is no object (or not too much) they're a great choice for your edge. Stacking 3750s can get you to a nice medium density.

I haven't touched one yet, but the Cisco Nexus switches look interesting. Check them out, as they might be more interesting than a 6500. I don't know what pricing looks like, I just know they're a ground up new platform including new software. Normally that would be a huge no-no, but vs. a cat 6500 and current IOS, maybe a whole new platform is exactly what's needed to get them back on track.

Another possible architecture would be to use cheap managed L2 switches at the edge (e.g., SMC, HP, etc., or 2960s) and a good L3 switch or router in the core. As long as your needs aren't feature heavy, I like architectures that treat the last hop as a fairly dumb aggregation layer (that is, have closets close to the ports and just have the switches aggregate them into your network core).

I'd avoid Foundry and Extreme and Force10 right now, their current products aren't interesting and you aren't saving enough money to be worth the risks. If you're going to buy cheaper switches, buy a lot cheaper switches (read: L2 only).

Cisco's wireless stuff is good. Also look at Aruba Networks.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Do you guys have some hard facts that would sway me to one or the other? I know the RFP's will have tons of information, but typically its vendor sales BS. Ours is better because its ours kinda thing. I'm not hugely into networking at the moment, just finished my ccna boot camp so im not completely clueless, but cisco is really all I've ever known. The main competitor seems to be Nortel at the moment and im struggling to find any arguments for or against them.

The reason nortel is being considered is because they will be the voice vendor.

 

[spidey07]

It's going to depend on what you specified in your RFP for your requirements. All of them have their strong points and weak points that is too much for a forum post. You could check Gartner Research for some information.

I say right now that I'm a cisco bigot, mainly because of the relationship I have with them and ease of use. Basically their account management rocks. So that's where I'm coming from and want it openly known. Last order I did they threw in 500K worth of free gear because they were at FY end. Make no bones about it, they ALL want your money so make them all work. So keep in mind ongoing account management and post sales support.

Is cisco the best technology solution for each aspect of networking? No, absolutely not. But they've got you on total cost of ownership and actually maintaining a network.

 

[Brovane]

Personally our shop is all Cisco. 4500 at the edge and 6500 at the Core. I have never had much issues and usually Cisco is quick to respond. One point is that it is much easier to find Cisco people than Foundry and Juniper people. Also very much Cisco has a complete end to end solution all the way from the Access Layer to the core. Cisco pretty much has a solution for every piece of the network from firewall, VPN, Security, Voice, Wireless San Fabric etc. they pretty much have it. It makes it easier if your gear is from one vendor so everybody will play nice together. For instance if you decide to have Juniper at your Core and Cisco out at the edge you could run into unknown issues and then have Cisco and Juniper pointing the finger at each other when you have a weird issue and call for support.

I am interested from the Voice side when you were looking at Voice solutions did a Cisco IPT solution loose out to Nortel?

 

[drebo]

Originally posted by: Brovane
I am interested from the Voice side when you were looking at Voice solutions did a Cisco IPT solution loose out to Nortel?

Asterisk ftw as far as VoIP goes. For my dollar, anyway.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Originally posted by: Brovane
Personally our shop is all Cisco. 4500 at the edge and 6500 at the Core. I have never had much issues and usually Cisco is quick to respond. One point is that it is much easier to find Cisco people than Foundry and Juniper people. Also very much Cisco has a complete end to end solution all the way from the Access Layer to the core. Cisco pretty much has a solution for every piece of the network from firewall, VPN, Security, Voice, Wireless San Fabric etc. they pretty much have it. It makes it easier if your gear is from one vendor so everybody will play nice together. For instance if you decide to have Juniper at your Core and Cisco out at the edge you could run into unknown issues and then have Cisco and Juniper pointing the finger at each other when you have a weird issue and call for support.

I am interested from the Voice side when you were looking at Voice solutions did a Cisco IPT solution loose out to Nortel?

I dont deal much with the voice, but from what I've heard we are not going the voip route because of concerns about emergency situations.

 

[Brovane]

Originally posted by: RadiclDreamer

Originally posted by: Brovane
Personally our shop is all Cisco. 4500 at the edge and 6500 at the Core. I have never had much issues and usually Cisco is quick to respond. One point is that it is much easier to find Cisco people than Foundry and Juniper people. Also very much Cisco has a complete end to end solution all the way from the Access Layer to the core. Cisco pretty much has a solution for every piece of the network from firewall, VPN, Security, Voice, Wireless San Fabric etc. they pretty much have it. It makes it easier if your gear is from one vendor so everybody will play nice together. For instance if you decide to have Juniper at your Core and Cisco out at the edge you could run into unknown issues and then have Cisco and Juniper pointing the finger at each other when you have a weird issue and call for support.

I am interested from the Voice side when you were looking at Voice solutions did a Cisco IPT solution loose out to Nortel?

I dont deal much with the voice, but from what I've heard we are not going the voip route because of concerns about emergency situations.

Hmm that is interesting. If you are doing a new facility with a new network then I would think that a converged network would seriously be considered over keeping separate voice and data architectures. Judging by what you are saying it looks like you are silo away from the Voice team. I don't really understand what is the concern about emergency because with a properly designed VOIP architecture, it is extremely stable and much more flexible in a emergency situation than a traditional TDM system.

 

[skyking]

Correct me if I am wrong OP, but I think the concerns are about basic connectivity in an emergency.
A complete VOIP relies on the WAN connection, and POTS does not. POTS is percieved to have a lower failure rate.

 

[Brovane]

Originally posted by: skyking
Correct me if I am wrong OP, but I think the concerns are about basic connectivity in an emergency.
A complete VOIP relies on the WAN connection, and POTS does not. POTS is percieved to have a lower failure rate.

If you design the architecture right WAN connectivity is not a concern. Really WAN connectivity for a IPT solution is more about toll avoidance.

IF you have a remote site say with 50 people you have a local router with SRST and a local T1 connect. Any local calls anyway you want them to route out this local T1 anyway, however for Long Distance traffic you have this route over the WAN and if the WAN is down you then route over the T1.

If a site has its own local CCM it should have its own locally VG routers which should do the same thing anyway.

For small sites say with 6-8 users we use a 2800 router where I work to and we have a 4-port FXO card in the router. If the WAN connection back to the main site fails then they can still make calls using SRST and the local FXO ports. We usually just hook up two of them through a local carrier.

So really a Cisco IPT solution doesn't have to rely solely on WAN connectivity to deliver dialtone.

Even if you still need Analog circuits (for example elevator phones) you can use a Cisco VG224 to deliver dialtone.

 

[drebo]

Originally posted by: skyking
Correct me if I am wrong OP, but I think the concerns are about basic connectivity in an emergency.
A complete VOIP relies on the WAN connection, and POTS does not. POTS is percieved to have a lower failure rate.

It's a common misconception that a VoIP phone system needs to use VoIP trunking. In my experience, it's almost never the case.

VoIP internally gives certain benefits and a bit of flexibility that's not available in a traditional digital phone system environment. It does not need to use WAN connectivity at all (excepting remote sites, yada yada).

Most of my systems end up with a PRI for trunking. With a properly laid out Power over Ethernet network and a couple nice uninterruptible power supplies, I can get phones up for a couple hours in the event of a power outage.

VoIP phone systems are the way of the future, man. Asterisk is the future!

 

[Jamsan]

Originally posted by: drebo

Originally posted by: skyking
Correct me if I am wrong OP, but I think the concerns are about basic connectivity in an emergency.
A complete VOIP relies on the WAN connection, and POTS does not. POTS is percieved to have a lower failure rate.

It's a common misconception that a VoIP phone system needs to use VoIP trunking. In my experience, it's almost never the case.

VoIP internally gives certain benefits and a bit of flexibility that's not available in a traditional digital phone system environment. It does not need to use WAN connectivity at all (excepting remote sites, yada yada).

Most of my systems end up with a PRI for trunking. With a properly laid out Power over Ethernet network and a couple nice uninterruptible power supplies, I can get phones up for a couple hours in the event of a power outage.

VoIP phone systems are the way of the future, man. Asterisk is the future!

Agreed on this. We currently have VoIP deployed at a single site. We have the access switches on our data center's generator, so our phones stay up if the power is out. We else terminate ours with a PRI as you mentioned, and we have 4 POTS lines connected to the controller as backup in the event of a PRI outage.

 

[spidey07]

Just to chime in, if one thinks an IPtel solution can't be as reliable as the PSTN then the design is really, really, really wrong. That's so year 2001 thinking. If anything it is MORE resilient.

But to be fair the healthcare industry is very, very, very slow to adopt this line of thinking. It's not money they're dealing with, it's people's live. And Nortel is very strong in this market, their strength is voice.

 

[Brovane]

My suspicion is that they have a separate Telephone department from data and desktop part of IT. I have heard about this before at other companies. Where I work the telephone, LAN, Desktop all part of IT Operations. What might have happened is that they asked the telephone guys to look into VOIP technology and they came up with all the negatives for the telephone management so they wouldn't have to switch from the TDM technology that they now.

Of course what is interesting is I was watching a Show on Discovery channel last week on Air Force One (Secret Access). Well when the cameras went into the conference room on Air Force One sitting right on the conference table is Cisco IP Phones, in the presidents office is a Cisco IP Phone. That to me says a lot about how far the technology has come that the US Air Force is fine with placing VOIP technology on flying Aircraft like Air Force One. Especially considering the importance of maintaining communication at all times from this plane.

 

[Brovane]

Originally posted by: Jamsan

Originally posted by: drebo

Originally posted by: skyking
Correct me if I am wrong OP, but I think the concerns are about basic connectivity in an emergency.
A complete VOIP relies on the WAN connection, and POTS does not. POTS is percieved to have a lower failure rate.

It's a common misconception that a VoIP phone system needs to use VoIP trunking. In my experience, it's almost never the case.

VoIP internally gives certain benefits and a bit of flexibility that's not available in a traditional digital phone system environment. It does not need to use WAN connectivity at all (excepting remote sites, yada yada).

Most of my systems end up with a PRI for trunking. With a properly laid out Power over Ethernet network and a couple nice uninterruptible power supplies, I can get phones up for a couple hours in the event of a power outage.

VoIP phone systems are the way of the future, man. Asterisk is the future!

Agreed on this. We currently have VoIP deployed at a single site. We have the access switches on our data center's generator, so our phones stay up if the power is out. We else terminate ours with a PRI as you mentioned, and we have 4 POTS lines connected to the controller as backup in the event of a PRI outage.

Our access layer switches all are feed from the Data Center UPS, which is then backed up by Generator so dial tone should never be lost in the even to power failure. The circuit that the Access Layer switches are on is feed from two 40Kva Transformers that are then feed from the UPS. so I have a A and B circuit and then each switch has 2 PS so I plug one into A and the other into the B side. So even if a transformer failed I am still good.

The flexible of VOIP is incredible. You need to quickly say setup a conference room with 20 phones because of a emergency. You can just setup a switch with POE and plug in the phones and you are good to go. You are working on a project in another part of the building for the day you can just unplug your phone and take it to the new location and plug it and you are good to go.

 

[mcmilljb]

Originally posted by: spidey07
But to be fair the healthcare industry is very, very, very slow to adopt this line of thinking. It's not money they're dealing with, it's people's live. And Nortel is very strong in this market, their strength is voice.

I agree with you because I worked for a hospital once. They don't value technology that's in the background and not seen. If it's not used directly to generate revenue, then it's seen as an expense that needs to be cheapened without regard to the value it adds. Just because you don't see it doesn't make worth less than the technology you see every day. They have some VERY expensive equipment that doctors will never see, but it allows them to do their job better, faster and cheaper.

 

[skyking]

I was careful (and correct) to say "POTS is percieved to have a lower failure rate."
All of my clients have stayed with it, largely due to the company size and the high initial deployment for VOIP. None of them have more than 8 lines of service , for example and could not take advantage Of DiD loops or fractional T1.
Nice discussion fellas, Sorry to sidetrack the OP.

 

[drebo]

Originally posted by: skyking
could not take advantage Of DiD loops or fractional T1.

You're not looking in the right places then. Telepacific (and I'm sure many other telcos) offer integrated T1 services which include both internet and PRI (or analog) services. With one popular Telepacific solution, you get T1 data access as well as the flexibility of a PRI for about $550/mo including 10,000 minutes of talk time. That's a pretty decent deal if you think about it.

 

[skyking]

Originally posted by: drebo

Originally posted by: skyking
could not take advantage Of DiD loops or fractional T1.

You're not looking in the right places then. Telepacific (and I'm sure many other telcos) offer integrated T1 services which include both internet and PRI (or analog) services. With one popular Telepacific solution, you get T1 data access as well as the flexibility of a PRI for about $550/mo including 10,000 minutes of talk time. That's a pretty decent deal if you think about it.

T1 at ~1.5 is quite a bit slower than a fast DSL line, and that is before fracking it out for voice.
The 8 line folks have a total cost of ~$370/ month for the DSL and the 8 lines and unlimited LD on two lines.
$550 is a hard sell there.