Does Cisco have competitors?

You might want to check out Vyatta.

You can get performance on a commodity PC (32-bit, 33mhz PCI bus) roughly on par with a 2600 series router... and it's open-source.

They just reached the "v1.0" milestone...

Juniper appears quite concerned about solutions that "substitute" for routers.

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Juniper Networks states,

"Competition in the network infrastructure and security markets is intense.

Cisco Systems, has historically dominated the market, with other companies such as Nortel Networks, Alcatel, CheckPoint Software Technologies, and Huawei Technologies providing competitive products.

In addition, a number of public and private companies have announced plans for new products to address the same needs that our products address.

We believe that our ability to compete with Cisco and others depends upon our ability to demonstrate that our products are superior in meeting the needs of our current and potential customers.

We expect that, over time, large companies with significant resources, technical expertise, market experience, customer relationships and broad product lines, such as Cisco, Nortel, Alcatel, and Huawei Technologies, will introduce new products which are designed to compete

more effectively in this market.

As a result, we expect to face increased competition in the future from

larger companies with significantly more resources than we have.

Although we believe that our technology and the purpose-built features of our products make them unique and will enable us to compete effectively with these companies, we cannot guarantee that we will be successful.

Many of our current and potential competitors, such as Cisco, Nortel, Alcatel, and Huawei Technologies have significantly broader product lines than we do and may bundle their products with other networking products in a manner that may discourage customers from purchasing our products.

Also, many of our current and potential competitors have greater name recognition and more extensive customer bases that could be leveraged. Increased competition could result in price reduction, fewer customer orders, reduced gross margins and loss of market share, any of which could seriously harm our operating results.

There are also several other companies that claim to have products with

greater capabilities than our products.

Consolidation in this industry has begun, with one or more of these smaller private companies being acquired by large, established suppliers of network infrastructure products, and we believe it is likely to continue.

As a result, we expect to face increased competition in the future from

larger companies with significantly more resources than we have.

Several companies also provide solutions that can substitute for some uses of routers.

For example, high bandwidth Asynchronous Transfer Mode ("ATM") switches are used in the core of certain major backbone service providers.

ATM switches can carry a variety of traffic types, including voice, video and data, using fixed, 53 byte cells.

Companies that use ATM switches are enhancing their products with new software technologies such as Multi-Protocol Label Switching ("MPLS"), which can potentially simplify the task of mixing routers and switches in the same network.

These substitutes can reduce the need for large numbers of routers."

Page 8 - Competition

Sincerely,

Brad Reese BradReese.Com - Global Cisco Systems Pre-Sales Support

Hendersonville Road, Suite 17 Asheville, North Carolina USA 28803 USA & Canada: 877-549-2680 International: 828-277-7272 Fax: 775-254-3558 AIM: R2MGrant BradReese.Com - Cisco Technical Forums