
Cisco's Robbins juggles tariffs, 'lumpy' service providers and 5G - octosphere
https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/cisco-s-robbins-juggles-tariffs-lumpy-service-providers-and-5g-during-3q-earnings-call
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howard941
The buried lede here is the desperation that built a subscription mandate. How
long can the goose lay golden eggs before it's starved by competition that
doesn't need monthly feeding?

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woah
"If you go back two years ago, we didn't have a single networking product with
a software subscription on it," Robbins said. "And today, every product in the
enterprise routing space, enterprise Wi-Fi space and the enterprise campus
switching space is sold with a mandatory subscription."

Has anyone used these? Is it worth the money?

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amluto
Ubiquiti is a major exception, and their products seem pretty good.

The whole enterprise wi-fi value proposition seems like it’s almost entirely
software. A very expensive enterprise wi-fi AP is essentially identical to a
home AP in a different case with less flashy antennas, a documented radiation
pattern, and software that is designed to do something intelligent when you
have a lot of them. The hardware differences should have negligible effect on
cost.

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StudentStuff
Ubiquiti's Unifi Cloud Controller depends on MongoDB, which they won't help
you with (having had MongoDB eat it multiple times on my Cloud Controller in
the last year). The Intrusion Detection System/Deep Packet Inspection wrecks
performance & throughput (and is pretty basic compared to eg: Watchguard),
IPv6 is disabled by default, and no VLAN tagging on the WAN port means
providers like Centurylink Fiber can't be used without an intermediate device
between your Unifi Security Gateway and the Optical Network Terminal.

The Unifi suite is great for a small to medium business that is game to splash
out $600 to $1500 (having the Unifi switch is critical to seamless VLAN
tagging internally), but for homes and larger businesses or those with fast
connections that want more than a basic router, the Unifi lineup doesn't have
the grunt.

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amluto
From a smallish amount of experience with Ubiquiti's gear, the Wi-Fi parts are
far better than the Unifi Security Gateway. And you can certainly use them
just fine without a USG.

I can only assume they'll be moving away from MongoDB soon, given the
licensing situation. And the new Cloud Controller Gen 2 is considerably more
reliable, which it achieves by the highly dubious hack of containing an
internal UPS so that it is less likely to shut down uncleanly and thus die a
horrible death.

The IPv6 situation is, indeed, embarrassing. But that, too, is solved by just
not using a USG.

edit: None of this is particularly unique to Ubiquiti, IMO. By committing to
using the same system or vendor for routing and for wi-fi, you make upgrades
harder and you get stuck with feature sets you may not want. Home networks
where the wi-fi is the cable modem or the wi-fi is the NAT/router box have the
same problem, and it's even worse if you start using the same object for
NAT/routing, wi-fi, smart home stuff, and NAS. Yuck. I wouldn't want to run an
enterprise network where I've committed to using the same gear for routing and
wi-fi.

It's a bit of shame that it's so hard to do a good job with wi-fi gear from
multiple vendors, but getting things like fast roaming to work right is a huge
pain without someone's proprietary management stack involved.

