> Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 15:46:34 -0400 (EDT) > From: Sean Donelan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > On Tue, 27 May 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Are you buying directly from cisco or from resellers? If you are getting > > counterfeit hardware directly from cisco then I guess we have real problems. > > According to the FBI presentation, which may not be a reliable source > for this topic, Cisco has very few "direct" customers. > > Even if you think you are ordering "direct" from Cisco, e.g. > www.cisco.com, the order seems to get forwarded to several primary Cisco > resellers and the hardware shipped via a reseller. Even most resellers > buy their Cisco products from a primary reseller or a secondary reseller, > not direct from Cisco. > > The FBI presentation did note that a few US Cisco customers, such as some > unnamed large US telcos and unnamed intelligence agencies, do order and > ship directly from Cisco. >
A lot of folks order from a reseller and Cisco ships directly. This is true for many section 8a resellers when selling to organizations under those purchasing mandates...anyone spending federal $$$. I suspect some states have similar requirements. (Section 8a gives preference to small, minority owned, and disadvantaged businesses.) In any case, the reseller never sees this equipment. I am unclear on how common this is in the non-8a part of the world, but I suspect a lot of folks get their stuff direct from Cisco (or Juniper, for that matter), even though they buy from a reseller, if they are buying bigger boxes that small resellers are unlikely to stock. -- R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +1 510 486-8634 Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4 EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751
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