I've opened up both boxes, and given my background as systems-hardware
engineer I could not give one box more credit than the other. One's running a
386 on 33Mhz, the other a 680x0 with rufly the same processing power.
(I was in a hurry to get the box closed, after I fixed a fan on the cisco,
and didn't really pay attention.)
So most/all of the significant differences are in the software (aren't they
always.) Now Cisco's IOS is full of features, but usually that is no
guarantee for quality, let alone performance. A good example is this BGP
stuff: dependant on why you'd like to use it, it looks like even 16Mb is a
large overkill. And Cisco claims they need 32Mb, and worse: very expensive
extra 32Mb's.
And thus I'm very suprissed to read here that an IRX has performance
problems with 2 T1's.
My objective currently is to merge external routing to BGP and get an AS.
And since I'm not in default favour of supporting the biggest and largest
suppliers, we try to be carefull by going to people like Cisco (or
Microsoft).
In this functionality is the most important, price the second one.
--Willem Jan
-- Internet Access Eindhoven BV., voice: +31-40-2468500, data: +31-40-2439436 P.O. 928, 5600 AX Eindhoven, The Netherlands Full Internet connectivity for only fl 12.95 a month. Call now, and login as 'new'.