Thomas Larus wrote: > > The big difference, for me anyway, is that it is a lot easier > to find > answers to technical questions about the equipment on Cisco's > website. > Cisco's website is voluminous and easy to search.
I agree that Cisco's website is voluminous. It's full of well-written, helpful material, most of it accurate. The search engine never works very well for me, though. I use Google. :-) Try searching at Cisco's site on SAFE, for example. Isn't it a bit ridiculous that it comes up with articles that mention fail-safe? (By the way, Google is so cool that you can get it to convert to hex for you. Try typing in "100 in hexadecimal" in Google, for example. Isn't that great what it does?) As far as other differences between Cisco and Nortel.... There's a good reason I never did marketing, so this won't be stated very well, but Cisco strives to offer end-to-end solutions. Not only do they have products that fit into every niche of a mutli-faceted enterprise or service provider's network, but they also have software tools to optimize the services offered at every layer of a multi-layered network. They have tools for the edge, for the core, for campus networks, home networks, huge service provider networks, etc. Other vendors focus on just one aspect of networking and don't offer end-to-end solutions. One downside with Cisco equipment is that it is designed to support gazillions of features. Features are more important to Cisco than ease of use. Not only can their equipment (espeically PIXes) be a pain in the butt to configure, but it can be almost impossible to even figure out which version of software to use since there are hundreds. It's important to work with a Cisco partner when figuring out which software to use and when buying equipment. Cisco makes it pretty much impossible for the ordinary person to do this... Cisco's Technical Assistance Center (TAC) is excellent. I've heard a few complaints over the years, but I think some people just got unlucky. Most of the time when you call TAC you get a very experienced, knowlegable engineer. Many of them are CCIEs. Priscilla > > Perhaps you can get good info with some sort of Extreme login > or from > Extreme's technical support folks, but when you are a visiting > contractor on > site you don't necessarily want to ask the customer for their > vendor support > login or support contract number just to be able to ask a minor > question. > (Understatement). You want to be able to find answers to most > questions on > your own. > > Others will say that Extreme switches are fast and well-priced. > That may be > so, but I am a researcher (and writer) at heart, and Cisco's > website is the > best technical support website I have ever seen. > > Tom Larus, CCIE #10,014 > > ""Aspiring Cisco Gurl"" wrote in message > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Here is another dumb question... what is the difference > between Extreme > > network equipment and cisco equipment? > > > > I know that Cisco and Nortel... main diff is cli and menu > driven. > > **Please support GroupStudy by purchasing from the GroupStudy > Store: > > http://shop.groupstudy.com > > FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: > http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html > > Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=74339&t=74315 -------------------------------------------------- **Please support GroupStudy by purchasing from the GroupStudy Store: http://shop.groupstudy.com FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html
