Cradlepoint in Boise offers a range of routers supporting cellular or wireless failover, branch and IoT networks, and related needs, available through a variety of appliances, and via the Cradlepoint virtual edition router.
Cisco Nexus Series Switches work properly in specific data center environments with high specifications on facilities. When sites don´t have proper facilities, it could be a problem because these devices don't have airflow filters, if air cooling is not properly directed, it can affect the performance of NEXUS devices, provoking dust accumulation and heat issues on devices. Linecards on Cisco Nexus Series Switches has a dust sensor, if could be a problem, because when LC has dust acumulation, start to generate an specific log, this log affects memory and it could crash NEXUS devices.
It has worked great for our emergency vehicles and mobile remote dispatch stations. We did have them at other bases as secondary internet access in the event of failure of our fiber, but I have found that is not as useful as we thought it may have been. I have temporarily disabled cellular on those devices and just did not have the need for it.
Maintenance, upgrades, and software certification can be performed without service interruptions because of the modular nature of NX-OS and features such as In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU) and the capability for processes to restart dynamically
FabricPath:
Enables each device to build an overall view of the topology; this is similar to other link state routing protocols. Each device in the FabricPath topology is identified by a switch-id. The Layer 2 forwarding tables are built based on reachability to each switch-id, not by the MAC address. Eliminates spanning-tree to maximize network bandwidth and flexibility in topological configurations, as well as simplify operational support and configuration. This enables a tremendous amount of flexibility on the topology because you can now build FabricPath topologies for Layer 2-based networks the same as for Layer 3-based networks
Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV): Enables the Layer 2 extension between distributed data centers over any transport Layer 3 network
Implementing jumbo frames on interfaces of its fabric extender series (N2k, etc.) by editing the network QoS does not have to be a global configuration that would affect all its interfaces. It can be improved to become just an interface configuration.
Licensing on the NXOS is a bit complicated and expensive. I understand that the Nexus is made for core data center switching but it does not have to break the bank.
OTV technology is for Nexus only. Based on the advantage of the technology, it should be made vendor-neutral to accommodate other vendor devices.
Because its the best tech out there and all our engineers are very used to working on Cisco switches. It is great for troubleshooting issues on L2 and L3. It provides bandwidth and throughput like no other switch out there. We are a ACI shop so the Nexus blends nicely with that
I have been using some type of device like this for a very long time. We have and will maintain the need for this and have no immediate plan to make any change from Cradlepoint Routers. They have been very solid. These devices are a bit pricey, however worth the money as they always work and are reliable and save IT staff time.
It takes some time to get used to the nx-os software, as it is quite different from ios or ios-xr. which can be a downside, because people already have a number of different languages or command line syntaxes to memorize for their job, that would be the only obvious downside, once you know the syntax everything is pretty intuitive and features like commits make it worth the effort.
These switches are very fast. They've been designed to work within the data center. We connect them to Cisco UCS-B Mini servers with the storage being directly attached. They are able to handle the data traffic pretty easily. We can also move servers pretty fast from data center to data center without overloading them. This has allowed our company to stay running during any kind of conditional outage. We have come to really rely on them for business continuity.
Overall, Cisco has great products and I believe that they believe in the philosophy of a great customer experience. Although there have been a few technical support issues that caused a lot of company anxiety, in most cases, Cisco has gone above and beyond in making a valiant effort to help the customer solve any issues.
It has always been a pleasure working with that team. They always go above and beyond with getting the device working as you need it to work and are always willing to explain and answer any questions.
The Cisco 9000 stacks up quite well against the Cisco Catalyst 3850 switches. The additional features available in the Nexus 9000, such as VPN, FCoE, 40 gigabits, give us the ability to support the future needs of the company in our data center. The Nexus 9000 allowed us to condense our core and aggregation environment that comprised of 2 Catalyst 6504 and 2 Catalyst 6509 to a port of Nexus 9000. Although the Catalyst 3850 would be sufficient to handle routing, those features in the Nexus 9000 made it the clear choice for us.
I have not used a cellular router before this, so I can't compare.
I am however familiar with Cradlepoint as designing components for Emergency Responders to keep them connected and online while dispatched. That was a deciding factor for us. We wanted something heavy duty and reliable.
The Nexus 3000 series switches are data center switches, so I would say they have similar security ability to other switches in this segment. I don't have a lot of experience doing more than basic ACL security on switches, but I know these can be integrated into other security solutions like Cisco ISE and 802.1x authentication. It could also be integrated into an ACI solution to add micro segmentation, which would bring in other security functions.
