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This is nothing new. The "Just buy Cisco" mentality has been unnecessarily draining funds from IT departments for years. Things like a $1,300 USD Mikrotik router with 36 cors @ 1.2Ghz + 16GB ram[1] easily go toe-to-toe with "heavy-weight" $5,000-10,000+ Cisco equipment, both in features and actual throughput.

You do gain additional support when buying a "name brand" since there may be more community resources available, however you really do your company a disservice by not even considering far less expensive but equal alternatives.

[1] http://routerboard.com/CCR1036-8G-2SplusEM



I think you are being unfairly dismissive. The novelty here is not in just buying generic routers. It is in changing the architecture of their network: https://code.facebook.com/posts/360346274145943/introducing-...


I'm pretty sure he didn't even RTFA.

And, related to what he wrote, yes, you can buy a more powerful Mikrotik router for less than one with the Cisco name on it. The software on 'em sucks, though, and they have some weirds things about them. Additionally, they used to flagrantly skirt around the GPL although I'm not sure if they still do.


Interesting that the Mikrotik router uses Tilera's interesting CPU.

$877 on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Mikrotik-RouterBoard-CCR1036-12G-4S-Pe...

I see EZchip bought Tilera for $130M in Sept.


(not the same one I linked to, that one has a max throughput of 16Gbps while the one i linked to is max of 28Gbps) The one you linked to is MSRP $995 USD.

Still an incredible deal for what you get.




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