North American Network Operators Group

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Re: optics pricing (Re: Weird GigE Media Converter Behavior)

  • From: Richard A Steenbergen
  • Date: Sat Aug 28 19:16:42 2004

On Sat, Aug 28, 2004 at 10:28:24AM -0700, Michel Py wrote:
> 
> Economics 101. Cisco (and many other vendors, BTW) are not charities.
> Their purpose is to make investors and shareholders (which includes me)
> happy. And yes, this includes reselling OEM hardware at astronomical
> prices when they can, because it never lasts long.

Obviously. But us folks who run networks aren't charities either (though 
given most folks' current economic status, they might as well just become 
501(c)(3)'s and call it a day). A few of us actually have business plans 
that involve something other than scheduling our next chapter 11 filing, 
which every so often requires the use of that squishy thing between your 
ears.

Smart folks understand that router vendors are reselling optics for 
10x-100x the price they can actually be purchased for. Obviously it is the 
job of the vendor to try and squeeze as much money out of their customers 
as they possibly can, but at least smart folks have the CHOICE not to take 
the bait. We start to get annoyed when the vendors remove that choice by 
engaging in practices like locking down GBIC/SFP modules by vendor ID 
codes for no reason other than to force customers into paying absurd 
markup for their optics, intentionally designing interfaces with fixed 
optics so that you have to purchase more cards than you might actually 
need in order to have the necessary optics, etc.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <[email protected]>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
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