Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 18:22:39 +0300 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: Joe Warner <jswarner@uswest.net> Cc: freebsd newbies <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs CISCO Message-ID: <20000624182238.A808@hades.hell.gr> In-Reply-To: <3954BAF5.29652D7B@uswest.net>; from jswarner@uswest.net on Sat, Jun 24, 2000 at 07:43:17AM -0600 References: <3954BAF5.29652D7B@uswest.net>
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On Sat, Jun 24, 2000 at 07:43:17AM -0600, Joe Warner wrote:
> If you can take an old 386 or 486, install FreeBSD on it and turn it
> into a cost effective,secure and highly configurable router, why then do
> company's continue to pay the big bucks for CISCO routers?
FreeBSD is an open source solution to the problem. CISCO's routers are
supported by a commercial company. All the reasons that apply to the
question "Why do companies still use closed source solutions, when we
have {Free,Net,Open}BSD and Linux?" can be applied to this question too.
Oh, and then there is support. I myself, being a FreeBSD user for
almost a year now, know that the support from the BSD lists and the web
sites dedicated to FreeBSD is excellent. What IT people want though is
a company, a brand, a name that they can write in their agendas beside a
phone number and rest in peace that when they have a problem, they will
call that phone and get support. I am not arguing for IT people here, I
strongly disagree with the way they take some decisions. But this is a
fact, and I can not pretend that it does not happen.
Another good reason is that CISCO's routers are dedicated machines built
exactly with their role sas routers in mind. FreeBSD will be usually
installed on a general purpose PC, and someone ought to decide what
hardware to choose, etc. etc. All these decisions have been made for
their customers by CISCO, and the time and research this saves them is
what CISCO's customers pay the major bucks for.
As an example consider this case. When you buy a CISCO 2500 router, you
don't have to worry if it's IDE controller supports the UDMA hard-disk
that you bought from your vendor. In fact, apart from some simple
checks, you don't have to worry about hardware incompatibilities, and
other suchs beasts, at all.
Ciao.
--
Giorgos Keramidas, < keramida @ ceid . upatras . gr >
For my public key: finger keramida@ceid.upatras.gr
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