Stuck in Cisco's GRP. Proprietary protocol has some customers feeling locked in
By Scott Berinato, PC Week Online
05.18.98
zdnet.com
As corporations increasingly rely on
standards-based networking products,
administrators looking to build
next-generation switches into their LANs
are getting snagged on Cisco Systems Inc.'s
proprietary routing protocols.
Cisco's routing protocol, the EIGRP
(Extended Interior Gateway Routing
Protocol), is used in the company's routers
and forthcoming 8500 family of routing switches. However, it does not
communicate with the standard routing protocol, OSPF (Open Shortest
Path First) found on most vendors' routing switches--holding users back
from integrating other vendors' more powerful, less expensive Layer 3
switches.
Cisco's first routing switch, due in June, will cost $3,000 to $5,000 per
Gigabit Ethernet port. Bay Network Inc.'s Accelar routing switch is less
than $2,000 per Gigabit port.
Cisco released EIGRP's predecessor, IGRP, about 10 years ago as an
alternative to the inferior RIP (Routing Information Protocol). At the
time, IGRP had technological advantages, such as support for multipath
routing, a load-balancing technique.
Cisco considered pushing the protocol as a standard, but backed away.
"We decided if we gave up IGRP to standards groups, we would lose
ownership and control," said Cisco's IP product line manager, Martin
McNealis, in San Jose, Calif. "If you want to look at that negatively, you
can say that's a lock-in, but a lot of our users are using it for its unique
value-add."
But locked in is exactly how many IT managers feel.
"It's hard to maintain vendor partnerships with technology changing so
rapidly," said Jim Bollinger, assistant director of systems at the Virginia
Military Institute, in Lexington. "Stick with standards and you remain
flexible. No matter how good the proprietary code is, you feel a certain
amount of lock-in, which makes you apprehensive."
Cisco claims that its products can be integrated with the latest
routing-switch technologies by migrating all the routers on a network to
the standard OSPF protocol.
EIGRP network managers, on the other hand, contend that such
migrations from Cisco's protocol are a "monumental task" and not worth
the effort. "A conversion would be ridiculously costly and
time-consuming," said Eric Youngkin, director of telecommunications at
Corporate Technology Group Inc., in Baltimore.
"Even though OSPF is standard and the whole industry is pushing it, the
migration costs would be too great to consider," said Joe Capps,
manager of network services at Houston-based United Space Alliance.
"Normally, we want to go with the standard. This is the exception. It
doesn't make me happy, but I can live with it."
However, while users complain, a good number are content to stay the
course with Cisco.
"A lot of users will be more than happy to sign a check over to Cisco so
they don't have to do anything but put the box in," said analyst
Esmerelda Silva, of International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass.
Cisco is continuing to tweak EIGRP and this year will add support for
Synchronous Optical Network, frame relay and asynchronous transfer
mode backbones. "We'll be here to support EIGRP, which is the logical
choice," Cisco's McNealis said. "But there's no religion; if you want to
use OSPF, that's fine, we'll help you."
The migration from EIGRP to OSPF has to happen. "Layer 3 switches
should run OSPF," said Peter Smith, an analyst in the IT division of J.D.
Irving Ltd., of New Brunswick, N.J. "At some point, you have to bite
the bullet and switch over."
Between a rock and a hard place
Cisco routers don't support the same protocol as most other networking
hardware, making internetworking a headache for users.
Specification
Definition
How it Works
Industry-standard
OSPF
Link state protocol
Determines route
through frequently
updated network map
Cisco's EIGRP
DUAL ("diffusing
update algorithm")
protocol
Determines route
through delay,
bandwidth, reliability
and load on link |
