Thank you. Now that is an intelligent response that actually engages me on the actual issues. I must commend you for sticking to the subject rather than engaging in personal attacks, as a lot of people apparently feel the need to do (what's up with that attitude anyway? It's almost like some people think I'm somehow insulting their religion, and since when did Cisco become a religion?).
Some points for you to consider * Yes you are correct to say that that there is no such thing as "basic Juniper or beginning Juniper". Such a thing is indeed an oxymoron due to the nature of Juniper's targeted market. So let me revise me argument slightly and say that my argument only applies to intermediate and expert-level skills. For networking newbies, the CCNA, I concede is the only reasonable game in town. But for intermediate level people, I believe that now you can start comparing Juniper and, say the CCNP, to a reasonable degree. It is my gut feeling that the ratio is indeed somwhere around 330:1 for CCNP's to "JNCNP's" (if such a thing existed). Now it is true that I do not have any hard numbers to back that up (and nobody has any hard numbers that disprove it), but I appeal to the fact that the CCNP is fairly well-known, and has already attained semi-paper-cert status, in the sense that CCNP braindumps are out there and pretty easy to find. This therefore means there is a great deal of extra competition for the "real" CCNP's' (the ones who can back up their cert with actual experience). Whereas it is much more difficult to fake your way around the Juniper world, such that anybody who has even 1 year of Juniper experience does in fact know a fairly good amount, under the notion that if he was true dummy, he would never be allowed the chance to touch any Juniper stuff in the first place. It is the extra competition, in the Cisco world, of paper-certs and people who are only lab rats and no practical experience, that is what really screws things up for the Cisco people. Juniper doesn't suffer from this problem (at least, not yet). * Competition. Anybody who reads my arguments carefully will see that my entire thesis rests on the notion of competition - the fact that there is substantially more competition for every Cisco job opening than there is for a Juniper job. For example, I appeal to the cashier vs. lawyer argument. Clearly there is more demand for cashiers than lawyers, because how many times do you buy something vs. how many times do you sue somebody? But does it then follow that cashiers are paid better than lawyers? Of course not, because the fact there is a vastly larger pool of labor supply for cashiers than lawyers. You can pretty much take anybody off the street and teach him how to ring people up on a cash register. But you can't just take anybody off the street and get him to pass the Bar exam. So it's a case of constrained demand, but even more constrained supply. Of, if you prefer a more mathematical approach, is it really that desirable for there to be 100X the job openings, if there are also 10,000X the people competing with you for those openings? So, for people who don't believe me and want to shut me up forever, I will outline the roadmap for you to completely defeat my argument. Just prove to me that it is indeed untrue that there is more competition for a given Cisco opening than a given Juniper opening. Do it, and you win. * The revenue model. I believe the revenue model is the best one to use, because I believe that networks can be best summarized by dollars. This is because I believe that business bean counters aren't usually stupid. Ok, sometimes, they are, but generally they are not. If a network costs, say $10 million to built, I don't think it is unreasonable to say that it is roughly 10 times more complex than, say, a $1 million network to build, and therefore requires 10 time the expertise. Now of course, you might say that the $10 million network might just consist of a few very very expensive routers, and the $1 million network might be a whole bunch of Cisco 800's. But this is where the notion of bean counters having a brain comes in - I believe that if they approved $10 million for a network, then that network must be doing something complex and important (if not, why did you spend so much money?), whereas the $1 million network must not be as important (otherwise, they would spend more money on it). And any network that is important enough to be worth $10 million on must have all kinds of optimizations and redundancy and all that good stuff (again, if this were not necessary, then exactly why did you spend all that money on the network in the first place)? Therefore, that expensive network will most likely have all kinds of fancy routing protocols and dial backup, and QoS, and that kind of thing on it. This therefore means that you require more expertise to set up all these things, Even if there aren't that many physical routers to set up, the fact that you are doing more with the routers you do have implies that you need more expertise. The same is also true for the cheap network. Even if it consists of a lot of (little) networks, the fact that the company is not spending that much money on it must mean that it is not as important to the company (because otherwise, they would spend more money to make it better). This therefore means that they can probably get away with a simple routing protocol, or maybe even just static routes. And the routers probably aren't doing much else but just routing. Or, I'll put it another way, a 20-router network that is doing a lot can be much more difficult to set up than a 200-router network that is doing very little. Still don't believe me? I appeal to the CCIE lab. It should be a piece of cake, right? There are only 6 routers and 2 switches for you to configure. But everybody who's tried the lab knows it's still a pain. It's not the number of boxes you have, it's what you are doing with them that counts. And I believe it is indeed true that any network that somebody is willing to spend more money on also tends to be more important and doing more complex thing (otherwise, as Carrot Top says, why not save a buck or two?) * My old post. Ok, I will try to find a way to send it to you. Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=24387&t=24336 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
