Cisco Set to Dominate Linux Market? (InternetNews)

Cisco Set to Dominate Linux Market? (InternetNews)

Posted Apr 12, 2008 8:55 UTC (Sat) by gdt (subscriber, #6284)
Parent article: Cisco Set to Dominate Linux Market? (InternetNews)

This has to be seen in the wider context of the router market.

Firstly, Juniper have put a lot of work into third-party accessibility of its routers (which are based on FreeBSD) and this is Cisco's response.

Secondly, this is for branch office routers, where Cisco faces potential competition from PC servers running network services (typically running Linux). A branch office usually has a router and a small server (running DHCP, DNS forwarding, maybe a SIP gateway, that sort of thing). Savings can be made by reducing this to one box -- either by doing packet forwarding in the server or by doing network services in the router. Cisco want that one branch office box to be their box, not some server company's box containing a optical gigabit ethernet card or an ethernet link to a ADSL modem.

Cisco aren't planning for this product to to compete with data center servers.

PS: Having explained Cisco's strategy, I don't think it will work. I think we'll see the next generation of home routers/NAS grow to be used as branch office router/servers. The biggest problem with Cisco's approach is that it doesn't integrate storage, not even a eSATA port.

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I doubt home routers will be used much, since the reliability is crappy.  Cisco and the other
business vendors make stuff in the same class for a lot more if you need a router that stays
working.

So Cisco discovers how to sell overpriced blades into their routers and the world thinks this
is progress?  They sell you a closed solution and you have to pay extra for the privilege of
running on their hardware, almost sounds like an iScone.

See "Dumb and Dumber": http://www.vyatta.org/node/1713