Cisco vs. Nortel: Router performance & suggestions

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by chalkspray, May 31, 2006.

  1. chalkspray

    chalkspray Private E-2

    This is going to be a little long, please bear with me...

    I've always been a Cisco guy myself. I'm a CCNA, and every place I've ever worked has had Cisco equipment. So I've never come across Nortel routers and never had to work with them. Two months ago I started working for a company who's currently not managing their own network circuits and is using 2600 Cisco routers on top of that. So of course I immediately created diagrams of the current network, came up with a better design, and insisted that we replace all of the equipment with 2800 series routers. They've agreed that we need to replace all the routers, and in addition, all of the switches will eventually need to be replaced as they are mostly 3com Superstack 3's.

    The problem is of course, $$$. However, money would not be an issue if I can present this right. I know they'd approve it if I can get my point across. In addition, there's one guy here who's never been a big Cisco fan and has always worked with Nortel equipment. He's a tech and not involved in the network management, but he works with the phone systems and printers and was at least able to get his point across that maybe before purchasing Cisco equipment we should compare the equipment to Nortel. So he's sicked his Nortel engineer buddy on me who's now hounding me with his sales pitch on a continuous basis, telling me that Nortel routers are better than Cisco, blah blah blah.

    From what I've read and from what I've heard, Nortel routers do not out perform Cisco routers. He's provided me with some sort of performance review done by the "Tolly Group" showing "Tasman Router 1000 Series Routers" compared to Cisco 1700 routers. I'm guessing Tasman is a company which bought up Nortel equipment and slapped their name on it and possibly replaced the firmware. Obviously, what he gave me is not a good comparison. Cisco 1700 routers aren't medium business class routers anyway!

    So what I'm wanting to implement is a Cisco 2811 HSEC/K9 Router at our main office (approx 250 pc's) which would be connected to our 10 other offices (approx 25 to 50 pc's per site) via MPLS; those offices would also have 2811's but they would not have the HSEC upgrade. We intend to implement VOIP here sometime in the future and my understanding is that the 2801 router does not support VOIP since it cannot have NM/NME modules.

    I'm also suggesting we replace the switches with Cisco switches to gain the added ability to use VLAN's with a VTP server in addition to 802.1x authentication. Our existing switches support VLAN's & 802.1x, but they don't have an easily manageable centralized VLAN database for mobile users who don't always connect to the same switch or at the same office. We haven't implemented 802.1x due to a few design snags that we've come across in testing, but I'll save that for another time.

    The Nortel guy is suggesting that we implement a Nortel Secure Router 1001,1002,1004 or Secure Router 3120 at our main office, and one of the 100x routers at the other offices. He's claiming that those routers will out-perform the Cisco routers I have chosen and that they are much more secure and industry supported.

    I don't like the routers that he's supplied because, other than the 3120, they dont use modules, they aren't upgradable, and they don't appear to be designed for an environment where future expansion is a very real possibility.

    On top of all this, he's claiming that EIGRP is full of security holes and he's recommending not to use it because its not scalable. Again, I think he's full of cr@p. I've had plenty of experience with EIGRP and have found it to be very reliable and scalable. The few "holes" I have heard about have well documented work-arounds as disclosed by Cisco in December of 2005.

    So I want to hear from some Network Engineers. What routers are you using and what would you recommend? Any pros/cons to either side?

    Thanks very much in advance.
     
  2. renegadeone8

    renegadeone8 Private E-2

    Not that I'm a professional by any means, but I have taken CCNA classes, and in our class we had a chance to work with both cisco and nortel routers. I believe that the reason cisco equipment is more common IS because it is better. We have some lower model routers, and both have had some problems, but the cisco routers are much easier to implement into our network on campus (for a school district) (only about 200 PC's....probably 50 in each of the four schools.) Performance didnt seem to be a huge issue with either router, but with such a limited geographical area, i can't really comment on that. Personally I just liked working with the cisco routers. Maybe I'm biased since my certifications are all from cisco, but who knows.

    Also EIGRP is probably a fine choice. The comment about no scalability is garbage. It is easily upgradable, can be scaled to networks much larger than yours.

    Remember I'm not a professional, so take it for what it's worth, but it sounds like this guy and his buddy just want to sell you some equipment.
     
  3. chalkspray

    chalkspray Private E-2

    My thoughts exactly. Thanks for the reply.

    Anyone else?
     
  4. IrOnMaN

    IrOnMaN Specialist

    all i ever worked with is cisco routers so i cant comment about nortel. i was just wondering though, what did you study for your ccna?

    I apologize that this has nothing to do with your question.
     
  5. chalkspray

    chalkspray Private E-2

    When I went for my CCNA, like my other certifications, I didn't go through any schooling. I read as many books as I could find, took the practice tests at the end of the chapters, and played with the equipment. Some can do this, some cant... so you might give that a whirl.

    I'd recommend the CCNA book by Mc-Graw-Hill/Osborne. I've read several, and out of the ones I've seen, I hated the Cisco Press books the most. Ironically, I also found them to be the most inaccurate.

    Personally, I consider so-called "bootcamps" worthless and those who take them should be stripped of their certs. They teach people the test and not the technology. Those people ruin the certs for the rest of us. Of the ones I have (CCNA, MCSA, MCP, A+, Network+) the CCNA is the only one that is still considered somewhat legitimate; because of those bootcamps.
     
  6. Gir.1337

    Gir.1337 Private E-2

    I am no expert, but I am working on getting my CCNA. I interned at The Hershey Company (formerly The Hershey Foods Corp.) within the networking group, and we have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of devices hooked up to our network, which is global (even China! - special firewalls for them =D). And wouldn't you know it, almost every little bit of it is run on Cisco hardware. We still have a few 3com 3300, 1100, and PS40 hubs laying around in the smaller sections, but nearly everything has been replaced with Cisco. The 2800's are quite nice, and we never have any problems with them. Our favourite switches are the 2900's though, and our core swith was a 7500 series, but we replaced it with one hell of a 6500. Expandability on these routers and switches is great, and it's rare that we need to replace a lot of hardware to slap in a few new things.

    As for managability, Cisco has some great stuff. We have programs that can gather all of the serial numbers from each router and switch within a few seconds if we want, and that's without the use of a pre-existing database with all that info loaded. These puppies are a breaze to manage with the right tools.

    And as for security, well, the fact that we extend to China and don't have any issues should proof alone ^_^. We havn't had any security issues, as far as networking issues, at all since or even before I've been interning with them. Then again, we also have guys with their CCIE's configuring these bad boys, so I guess that is also a large factor. We don't run any Nortel hardware, so I can't give any input for you there, but I can say that even the old Cisco boxes beat the snot out of the 3com (crap to manage).

    By the way, to convince "normal people" to install the Cisco stuff, sometimes throwing out big numbers about complicated technologies is always fun to give to the big guys : )
     

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