Cisco 5500 Series Network Convergence System (NCS 5500) vs. HPE Enterprise Routers

Cloud based solutions, these need the necessary bandwidth going from point A to point B. Automate as much as possible from a WAN Core edge standpoint, take away the always on maintaining of the routers/switches on the network. Automation is extremely important in today's world. The Cisco 5500 Series Network Convergence System would not be a very viable solution for a small company, especially from a budgetary standpoint.

Incentivized

HPE routers are best suited for the mid-sized enterprises, they have proven ability to cope up the LAN traffic, as well as traffic runs between two different sites, by using the MPLS or VPLS circuits. In our environment, we are keeping the HPE routers at the edge of the network connected with the firewall on the backend which segregates the inside and outside traffic. We are running the BGP protocol to load balance the inbound and outbound traffic coming from different admin routers.

Incentivized

• It is versatile due to the diversity in models and form factors.
• Low power consumption compared to similar models
• Mature operating system code allowing for quick production installation and configuration.

Incentivized

• Routing
• Establishing the MPLS connectivity
• VPN
• BGP

Incentivized

• Horizontal blade designs are rare these days because if the gear is shipped in a rack, the blade can bend. The NCS5500's blades are horizontal.
• Not a NCS5500 specific issue, but XR has a ways to go, but will continue to grow with customer input.

Incentivized

• HPE routers can start building the Service Provider Grade routers.
• HPE routers can have better support experience.
• HPE routers can lower the prices.

Incentivized

Cisco support is always informative and reliable. Depending on the level of support you subscribe to, the techs and Cisco TAC are well versed in hardware and operating system of the NCS series routers. You can receive 24x7 support and either Next Business Day or 4-hour part replacement from Cisco if required.

Incentivized

Ultimately other Arista and Juniper choices were tested but design and testing did not give much detail as to why these are better overall or in comparison. We are already using Cisco in this level of the topology so that was most likely the strongest reason and fit the application we are using it for.

HPE routers performs upto the mark, it basically provides the connectivity to external and internal networks, however sometime the crashes happen in the routers make them look bad. Overall, I am satisfied with the product they use most open-source stuff which makes them easily interoperable with other router vendors as well.

Incentivized

• 100% uptime for 5 years.
• No successful intrusion attempts in 5 years.
• Very high throughput has allowed for constant and reliable connectivity.

Incentivized

• HPE routers help route the traffic from our enterprise to external routers.
• HPE routers help with making sure the availability of network to enterprise.
• HPE routers has been supporting enterprise network traffic routing from years.

Incentivized