Also sprach Stephen Rivera
Being a long time user of the TC1000 I am sure that you are aware that the majority of the commwork ports installed are located in most of the largest CLEC and ISP across the country. For instance AOL, MCI & Ameritech.
I personally would love to know the comparison in ports installed between the 2. Cisco and Commworks. No one is debating that Cisco is everywhere. But to think your 1000-5k ports installed is much, you're mistaken. AOL alone just upgraded and deinstalled over 35k ports. Add the other 2 companies I mentioned and I am sure combined they are over 200K installed ports.
I understand...most everyone on this list is pretty small fry...but we do still represent revenue that 3Com is forgoing based on their idiotic policies.
**** Point taken but...the hiper arc is not inteneded to be a backbone type router. you have to agree with that :)
Oh, absolutely...that's just a matter of hardware scale though, not software, and since this whole conversation is about software... ;) The Arc *could* be a *fantastic* router...I've said that all along, back when I first started testing with them. Its got some great capabilities...a good architecture...its getting so its a bit under-spec'ed in the memory department...but that's a perennial problem with routers from all vendors. Shoot...for a period of time, I gave some thought to using a TC rack populated with a bunch of ARCs for customer T1 (frame and ATM) aggregation, as well as potentially ethernet to ethernet routing. I don't think I could really get the density high enough to justify it at this point, but when the Arc first came out, it could have done a pretty decent job of that. Interesting thought, isn't it? :) If 3Com would have taken one of my suggestions and used the packet bus of the chassis as a CDMA/CD type of media for communication in between cards, then it would have been conceivable to have an ARC NIC with no ethernet ports on it, allowing higher densities of customer aggregation as well. Alas, that idea pretty much bounced off of them. I thought it was a cool idea...they apparently either didn't get it, knew of some technical reason that they couldn't do that, or something else, I don't know.
****No worries. I appreciate your reply. Maybe we should start a non-profit org that would lets us all stand together in a professional matter and address these problems as a group. Rather than a bunch of bitching business men. I;ll spear head the organization if you guys stand behind me.
If you want to start it, I'll certainly take part...but I must admit to being pessimistic about the likelihood of it actually accomplishing anything of any significance. We have banded together (remember the top 10 gripe list?) in the past...and what changed? The hold music. Woo hoo...some accomplishment there. :/ -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456