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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

Why do people still buy Cisco products? Leaving hardcoded passwords in their software shows such massive incompetence that I don't understand how they can still sell anything.

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The entire telecom industry has been asking this question for the last 20 years. They have finally broken Cisco’s hold over the last 5 years by just building their own hardware a la Facebook and Google. Turns out it’s cheaper that way anyway, and they were already having to hold cisco’s hand through meeting spec lists, so it’s not much extra work for them to own the IP.

It’s only cheaper if you’re operating at large scale. For the vast majority of organizations, Cisco/Juniper/Palo Alto/Arista are the only cost effective options.

Right, but at the low end, there are better options than Cisco (all 3 you mentioned really). At the high end (carrier grade), there weren’t necessarily.

They’re not going it alone; ONOS [1] is basically the open source carrier-grade networking platform. Think of it as Kubernetes for SDN packet routing that they’re building custom network integration solutions (think routers, bulk fiber termination, RF, satellite, laser, WiFi mesh) on top of. Then get Chinese manufacturers to build the hardware (which doesn’t have anything proprietary in it — all white box with Intel or ARM CPUs).

Incredibly powerful and flexible, and they have all the heavy hitters involved (Google, Intel, Samsung, AT&T, Comcast, etc.) It will be a game-changer for telecom in another 5 or 6 years once the management tools mature and commercial solutions based on it are developed.

[1] https://www.onosproject.org/

Cisco never sold low end hardware.

Tell us what are the great alternatives in middle end.

Didn't they buy Linksys? Don't they make their own line of home routers and modems/set top boxes?

Not there yet, but they will be once the Chinese manufacturers start mass producing white box hardware in a year or two. The ecosystem around carrier SDN is still maturing.

They still sell high performance products. And (most important) I suspect the alternatives are no better with respect to security; they just get less scrutiny and thus are less in the news.

Having a company which competes with Cisco (Umbrella) - I appreciate it when they give customers reasons to switch to us.

Telco executives that ink multi-million dollar deals will never see this article. For the most part, Cisco is pretty reliable and a known-commodity for Telcos.

I suspect (in the US) that many VPs of Telcos are best buds with major hardware vendors. Telcos run legal monopolies, there's no incentive to be disruptive.

Nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM (or Cisco)

Massive incompetence is rampant in my experience. I would expect Cisco to be no exception.

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