Does Cisco have a monopoly?

[Mucman]

I am thinking that Cisco has a larger monopoloy than Microsoft (can you quantify a monopoloy?). I know Juniper makes high end routers but how many Juniper routers do you think I go through to get to Anandtech, and how many of them are Cisco? It is probably safe to say that you will 99.999999% guarantee (number pulled out of a hat) that you will hit a Cisco router but you can't always guarantee you will hit something that is MS. An example being if you were browsing with Mozilla on a Linux machine looking at a webpage that is serve by a Linux box running Apache.

Just something I was pondering while making patch cables.

 

[xyyz]

<< I am thinking that Cisco has a larger monopoloy than Microsoft (can you quantify a monopoloy?). I know Juniper makes high end routers but how many Juniper routers do you think I go through to get to Anandtech, and how many of them are Cisco? It is probably safe to say that you will 99.999999% guarantee (number pulled out of a hat) that you will hit a Cisco router but you can't always guarantee you will hit something that is MS. An example being if you were browsing with Mozilla on a Linux machine looking at a webpage that is serve by a Linux box running Apache.

Just something I was pondering while making patch cables. >>



i'm no expert... but for a monopoly to exist you need to show that the company is unfair in it's business practices... I don't see how cisco is unfair.

unlike msft... cisco products rock... they're better than most out there. Cisco has about an 80% or something marketshare... but that's because they are good and not so much the only thing out there.

 

[ScottMac]

Well, Cisco stuff works, there sure is a lot of it around, but in most cases I've seen, Cisco is usually somewhere around third-place when it comes to performance in just about every (performance) category.

Performance is not the reason to buy Cisco.

The size and stability of the company, the broad scope of products, and support are more important in many cases than performance. Most customers I've delt with prefer to have a homogeneous network, managable from a single Management platform.

WHen you go "Best of Breed" for the entire network, you'll probably end up with three or four (or more) management platforms, most usually don't operate concurrently on the same machine (frequently a big Unix/Solaris/HP(S)UX machine.....)...and frequently don't share detail information with the other platforms. When you call support, there's frequently a lot of finger pointing to the "other vendor's" equipment. There may be interoperability issues, the colors might not coordinate...it's hell on Earth...who can live with clashing equipment colors?

Jumiper is a faster router, Extreme and Foundry are higher performing switches, Fore/Marconi ATM was far superior to anything Cisco ever produced...the list goes on...Cisco isn't the best performer....but that 's just not the usual primary criteria for purchasing enterprise/carrier/telco equipment. If it works "well enough," and has the stability and support...coupled with adequate management, it's a better candidate.

And for the record: Extreme also has excellent support, I've heard that Foundry does as well. Fore Systems/Marconi is out of the enterprise network business (screwing untold numbers of their customers, and the people that sold it)...I'm not saying that the other vendors mentioned DIDN"T have great support...what they don't have is the longevity (yet) and the size that Cisco offers.

Getting back to the original question from Muc, personally, I believe that you'd see mostly Juniper routers at the ISP, mostly Cisco routers along the carrier routes.

FWIW

Scott

 

[Mucman]

Very interesting! I find it interesting that Cisco is the only one advertising their name on regular cable TV. I don't watch much TV so I may have missed any Juniper, Extreme, Foundry, or Fore/Marconi adds. I think this has caused a large amount of awareness for Cisco and I wonder if this has helped them gain the market share they have. Are the prices of the equipment by the other companies competitive with Ciscos?

 

[spidey07]

Cisco has such a large market share because they've been around a while. I believe the first network router was made by the founder. Scott has pointed out the other major players. He's also brought up a VERY important point about enterprise networks - it is a pain in the arse to build/run/support one with different switches, routers, firewalls, management platforms, et al.

Why is Cisco so dominant? Probably ease of use and existing install base of personell who can build and support a cisco network. Some network guys (the elites 'round here) have been around long enough to know Bay, Cisco, Juniper, Extreme, Foundry, Cabletron, Kalpana, Lucent. Most know only Cisco. Kind of like microsoft, IT professionals like to use what they know best regardless if it truly is the right tool for the job. So people drop 4 dozen NT servers in when four unix boxes would have done a much better job.

I'll always look for a cisco solution (selfishly, 'cause that's what I know best). Also because they have a very broad product range and can fit the bill for most applications. Are they the bestest/fastest? NO. But it sure does make it easy to have a single support center with a single maintenance contract. Beats trying to get a conference call going between Nortel ATM switch, Cisco LAN switch and Juniper router support on why you're getting sporadic connectivity. Could be software, could be hardware, could be different implementations of the same RFC - who knows. It will take you a LONG time and many frustrating hours to figure that one out. I'd prefer to call cisco and say "fix it, now"

Does cisco have a monopoly - NO. There are many other companies out there offering competing and many times better products. Look at the SOHO arena - netgear (bay), linksys, SMC (they've been around a long time). Cisco dropped the ball on that one.

 

[FFC]

Will the packets you send here go via a Juniper router? Almost certainly. They have a 35% share of the core router market but more importantly are in use at all of the Tier 1 providers. In most of the carrier networks that I know about Juniper is used in the core with Cisco ath the edge. Juniper got to the faster transmission speeds first and make a dogs breakfast of designing and building their biggest router. It's very good now but initially was poor and that made their customers look elsewhere.

Cisco made the first dedicated routers, they cover more protocols than anyone else (that used to be important). The kit was very reliable and people latched onto it. Having done that a wealth of IOS knowledge now exists in the network operator community and operators are loath to mix and match vendors in a network for support reasons. In fact many new vendors develop their CLI to be like IOS to counter this.

Cisco went on to develop (or buy companies which were developing) products to cover ALL aspects of network. Dial access servers, Server load balancers, switches, VoIP products, ATM kit, Video servers etc. The problem with this strategy is that their products won't be the best in every category and the reputation for quality that they had with routers suffers detrimentally.

Others on here sing the praises of Cisco support, my personal experience of this would indicate otherwise, but I operate in Europe and that almost certainly makes a difference. Other major vendors also provide very poor support in Europe so at least the playing field is level. Junper is the only exception to this that I can point to, but they have fewer customers than most of the other vendors as theirs is a very specific market.

 

[Mucman]

To avoid mixing and matching looks like a very good reason to make everything Cisco... Thanks for the info guys.

Now what about Oracle?