It's sad to hear how Cisco has fallen. I remember working on some early ISP networks in the 90's. Cisco was everywhere!
So was Oracle and Microsoft Windows.
If history has taught us anything. It’s that the measure of a successful product is usually more to do with its sales people.
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Just because something is/was widely deployed does not mean it was good
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Back then they only really did routing and switching, and those are still the only things that Cisco kind-of does well.
Almost every new product of theirs I’ve touched in the last 20 years has been trash, and even the R&S golden goose is being dragged in that direction with customer-hostile functionality like Smart Licensing and a general decline in quality.