Ascend Archive
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Re: (ASCEND) Lucent -=-> Ascend --> ? (fwd)


On Wed, 2 Sep 1998, MegaZone wrote:

> You might be recent - I used to work for Livingston/Lucent RABU.  I figured
> everyone knew that.  I work for GTEI/BBN now.  (And Xylogics before 
> Livingston.)  And if you read long enough, and enough places, you'll see
> that I'm not always negative on Ascend, and not always positive on Lucent.

This is true, and I'm the same way, though I don't use Portmaster's
currently (we're a totally Ascend shop).  But I'm more often than not an
unsatisfied customer, and when I am, I let people know, and know why.
Waiting days for a callback have pretty much stopped me from EVER picking
up the phone to call Ascend.  I never get the anwer I'm looking for, and
waiting months, even years (my old employer got a call from Ascend
looking for me to go over a TR over a year after I called it into
support) to hear back about a TR isn't my style.  I'm a big fan of
"downgrade and it usually fixes itself," though lately I've been quite
happy with 5.0Ap51 and have no intention of upgrading to anything newer
since I've finally reached that delicate balance of OSPF, stacking across
chasis and reliability that I've long searched for.

> I do honestly believe the Lucent product is better in both HW and SW.  It
> does not have all of the bells and whistles Ascend does - and doesn't pretend
> to.  But what it does have it generally does cleaner, faster, and with a
> higher level of reliability.

And if he want's, he can search the archives where many of us have asked
time and time again for "less new features and concentrating more on
making existing ones work."  Then they don't understand when one of us
eventually just goes full on and vents to this list because we're tired of
OSPF being flaky or stacking working half the time or not being able to
get a list of what all the damn fatal errors or warnings means in the
debug console.

> I think the MAX 4000 and TNT are lame ducks frankly, but I think the MAX6000 
> is a nice piece of HW.  It is what the 4000 should have been.  And I've been
> hearing several good things about the TNT II - but maybe that's all bullshit 
> as Matt implied.

My 4000's work, and my TNT experiences weren't much fun.  I'd love to get
my hands on a 6000 (I also agree they are everything the 4000 should have
been) as soon as our two unites get shipped to us.

> I have a fairly solid history of calling things as I see them, which includes
> contradicting my employers when I disagree.  I'm terrible at towing a party
> line.  Many times I've recommended a competing vendor when I thought their
> product better solved the customers needs.

I've always learned to steer clear of any company claiming their products
were the best for every situation and every condition.  They have to lying
about at least one of them.

> -MZ

Joe Shaw - jshaw@insync.net
NetAdmin - Insync Internet Services
I haven't forgotten to say why I think the Cascade NAS > TNT.
"Backhoes never sleep." - Patrick Greenwell


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