I've worked with other brands besides Cisco. Brand X often costs less, but there is some truth to the old adage "you get what you pay for". Cisco devices usually work, especially when stressed. When they have defects (bugs), they tend to fix them. Cisco also sometimes provides features unavailable with brand X. (As an example of the latter, I recall, Cisco had multiple flavors of PIM while Enterasys only supported DVMRP. If you're not doing multicast, not an important difference, but if you're doing multicast, it might be. [Believe Enterasys now supports SM-PIM.])

When you mix brands, you often find different vendors seem to interpret standards, sometimes, enough differently that brand X doesn't work with brand Y. Then you get into the finger pointing games, i.e. it's the other vendor equipment's fault.

Another thing is documentations. Alot of the "more affordable" manufacturers don't really have strong documentations database to support their products in your network. Go to the Cisco website and look for configurations like MaTIP or ALPS and you'll find it.

Another is the question of RMA support for End-of-Sale/End-of-Life products. You can still get something from your 2900 switch that was purchased back in 2000. :)

Hi Mark,

In addition to accepting these previous advices I would ask my management about what FEATURES in a new switch are important (not only the $$$ amount).

Suppose they will say some specific security features are important.

Knowing this, you will be able to point out the differences (lack/existence of a feature) between the Cisco gear and other vendor's gear and you may have the very decisive cards in your hand.

Extend this principle freely to any feature.

Cheers:

Istvan