Also sprach Mark E. Levy
With all due respect, how long should 3Com support old products?
For a product that has no real inherent flaws? A *heck* of a lot longer than 4 years! You do realize that Cisco still *SELLS* their 2500 routers, right? They are, what, 10 years old now? They haven't even reached End Of Sales on those, let along End Of Life. Sure...they don't support the latest and greatest, because of technical reasons. If there is a technical reason that the quads can't support v.92...then I'll be satisified. I seriously doubt that to be the case though.
How long should any manufacturer support old products?
Cisco seems to EOL products at least 3 years after EOS. Sometimes longer.
At what price? How much would those of you who don't have support contracts pay for a V.92 upgrade for the quads?
I would be more than happy to pay for support contracts from 3Com that would include v.92 upgrades for quads. I don't particularly want to support the quads at the same level as DSPs and Arcs, that's goofy. But then, that's also one of the major problems with 3Com/CommWorks support contract policies...you can't cover different equipment at different levels. If the pricing and policies were reasonable, IgLou would most likely get 8x5xnbd support on quads, dual-pri cards, and the base chassis, with 24x7x4hour support on DSPs and Arcs. Instead, with 3Com/CommWorks policies, if we want to cover Arcs with 24x7x4hour support, we have to cover our quads with the same. Even though 3Com/CommWorks has EOL'ed them! We have to pay for them anyway!
Like you, 3Com's goal is to make a profit, and unless they can recoup the development cost, it doesn't make sense to invest in the upgrade.
And what I'm saying is that if 3Com/CommWorks doesn't start supporting their old equipment better, then they won't be selling any of their new equipment. I am *NOT* going to go through this same thing 2 years from now with...say...DSPs.
Technology changes. Should Microsoft continue to support the 486 with Win2K?
*Please* don't tell me you're holding up M$ as a paragon of reasonable service and support.
How about the 386? It's not even clear that the quad modem cards have enough memory or CPU or that the rest of the hardware will support V.92.
Then why on God's green earth hasn't 3Com/CommWorks *said* this. If this is truly the case, then I'm going to be a lot less vehement about this situation. What was it...3 years ago when we presented the Top 10 Gripe list to 3Com? What was the core of a lot of those issues? 3Com *SUCKS* at communicating with its customers. Gee...looks like that hasn't changed at all.
I realize that there are a lot of ISPs that are using the quads, but it's simply not realistic to expect 3Com or any other manufacturer to support old equipment ad infinitum.
And you'll notice that I'm not demanding support for the dual cards (even if they are newer than Cisco 2500's), which, again I'll point out, I still have in service. -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456 - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.