National Archives switches off Cisco
By Edwina Bartholomew,
Friday, November 23, 2001

The National Archives of Australia (NAA) has dumped newly-installed
integrated voice and data equipment from Cisco Systems in favour of a more
expensive option from US-based upstart Extreme Networks, after Cisco failed
to deliver on promised voice quality.

The NAA's Cisco debacle is understood to have cost tax payers just $30,000.
But the experience may prove more costly to Cisco Systems, which appears to
be lagging in the integrated voice-data switch market.

Archive director of business systems Stuart Robertson said he was "shocked
and disappointed" that Cisco's gear did not work. Particularly disturbing
was the poor quality of service with the Cisco system, he said.

The NAA had been seeking a private network package capable of transporting
both the NAA's bandwidth-hogging multimedia as well as simple voice calls
between two Canberra-based facilities 17 kilometres apart.

Robertson said voice quality was poor and the connection dropped out
entirely after about five minutes.

He said the $50,000 Extreme Networks switches would better enable the
organisation to leverage the Federal Government's Gigabit Ethernet
investment in Canberra known as ICON (intra-government optical fibre
network).

Robertson said the NAA expects to save $50,000 annually through the
newly-installed service.

A Cisco Systems spokesman said he was unaware the company's equipment had
been removed by the Archives. He said the company was not aware that its
switches (the 6500 model) had been removed, let alone replaced with
equipment from Extreme Networks.