I can relate, although not because I've ever used their hardware/software directly. I worked for Cisco for a time just writing tools to support their testing infrastructure. It was the perfect example of why working for large companies is a nightmare to get anything done.
their technology is closed source. Instead of supporting open
technologies that would allow other manufactures hardware to play nice with theirs, they force you to only buy theirs. It's a cabal if you ask me.
I'm sure you know you're not alone in this. The web security appliances that run on IronPort are also a lot of fun. Oh you want shell access
to, you know, troubleshoot your own system? Nope! Gotta call TAC and turn on the VPN so they can remote into your appliance and flip some
bits. Good times...
I just spent the past 11 hours upgrade our Call Manager, CUC, replacing
4 old 2800 Cisco Voice gateways with newer 4300 Cisco gateways with 250 users in total across 4 cities in Canada. I spent almost 7 or those 11 hours on a TAC call to work out kinks on an incredibly over complicated VOIP system.
I am a CCIE and I absolutely hate Cisco and their bloated ass bullshit. Instead of rolling out new CMs and CUCs and spending 6 figures to do
so, I could have done all of this and more with an Asterisk setup.
Alright, I am done my rant. For now.
Also, to add to your VoIP frustration. I was rolling out some FTDv and surprised how many basic features are missing and require FMC to enable features and some don't even exist!
Sysop: | altere |
---|---|
Location: | Houston, TX |
Users: | 69 |
Nodes: | 4 (0 / 4) |
Uptime: | 08:51:39 |
Calls: | 1,062 |
Calls today: | 2 |
Files: | 8,069 |
Messages: | 298,942 |