Once upon a time Randy Sherwyn shaped the electrons to say...
>Tomorrow we'll probably decide whether to go PM3 or USR TC's. Personally
>when it comes to equipment, I prefer the PM3..but when it comes to modems,
>I'm not convinced on the K56 as opposed to X2. (We currently use Computone
>Power racks)
My take - if you watch usr-tc@xmission.com the TC has had its share of
modem issues too. ALL of the boxes have. There is always that "The grass
is always greener" viewpoint, but don't count on ANY product being modem-
issue-free. We all continue to improve.
As for K56flex vs X2. I have the report on my desk but I'm at home (a
bit ill) so I don't recall if it was Del'Orro or Tolly or what. But as of
3Q97 K56flex had shipped something over 7.776 million modems, and X2 had
shipped about 4 million. With the rate of growth for Flex far outstripping
X2. By now there should be twice as many K56flex modems out there than X2,
and diverging.
But either way, sometime this month we should have an agreement on V.PCM.
And all of the majors are talking of trying to have it ready for trials in
February. In other words, in a couple of months the X2 vs K56flex will be
moot. So don't make major decisions based on that, IMHO.
Weigh in other things.
- PM-3 does OSPF (and BGP) the TC does not.
- PM-3 handles DOSBS on the same number as modems and data over PRI - the
TC does not.
- PM-3 handles DOSBS and modems over CT1 - the TC does not.
- Lucent provides a leading RADIUS server for a number of platforms. 3Com,
to my knowledge, does not support as many platforms or features in RADIUS.
- The PM-3 outperforms the TC. See the LANQuest results on our homepage.
(I've also seen the unpublished NSTL results from late 1995, we beat the
TC then too.)
- We're about to release an advanced PMconsole in Java to run anywhere.
3Com users are still trying to get the management software for some
major platforms (see their list).
- The PM-3 is denser than a TC. (Not going into the HiPer Access which
is another level entirely, which is where our next product competes.)
And they still need to replace the ComOS based OS on the TC - so you'll
have the pleasure of switching the core OS. They did it on the
NetServer8/16 units and users were rather less than pleased.
-MZ
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