Re:Cisco Vs. HP (Score 1)

Cisco's not bad - their main strength is the breadth of their product line. I can't say it always works as I've been bitten by many a cisco bug. I do appreciate that they break ground on tons of features that eventually become standards in their own right, but as a front runner they often step in it too. Juniper's CLI and scripting tools make Cisco's IOS/NOS look like amateur hour. The completely hardware based solutions provide some remarkable throughput but you pay for it. HP has been cranking out strong low-mid range PoE switch solutions that are very attractive on the cost front, especially with their lifetime guarantee. Running a rather large network with cisco/juniper/HP (plus tons of dlink/smc gear on it's way out), I can say that yes, there definitely are challenges. But no vendor has always provided the best tool for the job for every use case and having the ability to leverage multiple vendors has helped keep their costs competitive.

-- Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.