LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: David Newall <davidn@rebel.net.au>
  To  : Mark Newton <newton@atdot.dotat.org>
  Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 02:15:24 +1030

Re: "Host based" routers and BGP

Mark,

I'm not arguing with your call to use a dedicated router for routing, but I
do wonder if Ciscos really are as reliable as you think they are.  As an ISP
you would get to see a lot of hardware problems from cheapo PCs, and maybe
even from not-so-cheapo PCs, but then you get to see an awful lot of PCs, in
fact far more PCs than routers I would guess.  That's likely to skew  your
perception.

Since you brought up power supplies: I've seen enough never-turned-off
cheapo PC's to say with some authority that about 4 years is a common age
for them to blow up with power supply problems.  (I don't know how long to
expect from a quality PC, whatever type that is!  IBM maybe?)  How long do
you expect your Cisco to last without failure?  (And do they ever have power
supply problems?)

Actually what's more interesting to me -- because I expect that Cisco
hardware really is superb -- is what ongoing costs you have with them.  With
a PC you know you're up for a new unit every few years.  Call it $1000 per
year over the life of the unit.  You can expect to have to load serious
bug-fixes three or four times a year, too.  I'm willing to believe that the
Cisco you buy today will still be perfectly serviceable in ten years time or
longer, but they certainly have software upgrades at least as often as your
quality open source OS.  It seems that Cisco release security patches almost
as often as Windows, so the effort for upgrading software might be worse
than for host based routers.  (Worse in the sense of more often, although
it's probably a no-brainer each time, which in that sense is better.)  If
you don't buy a support contract do you get these patches for free, or do
you have to shell out extra cash?  How much does it cost to get them
automatically?  How much does it cost if you don't buy an upgrade contract?

Regards,

David

-- 
LinuxSA WWW: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/  IRC: #linuxsa on irc.linux.org.au
To unsubscribe from the LinuxSA list:
  mail linuxsa-request@linuxsa.org.au with "unsubscribe" as the subject