Proprietary Is Not A Four Letter Word: Page 2 of 2

Cisco's FabricPath and Brocade's Virtual Cluster Switch (VCS) are two current examples where a vendor leveraged standards with their own secret sauce. In Cisco's case, FabricPath is based largely on TRILL, but includes improvements that would make it non-standard (which Cisco freely admitted, to its credit), such as conversational MAC learning, VLAN grouping and computing different topologies, to name a few.

Brocade's VCS, on the other hand, used Fabric Shortest Path First (FSPF) as the pathing protocol and not IS-IS called for in TRILL (a fact Brocade neglected to mention until poked). Brocade claims that FSPF is superior to IS-IS, and, frankly, that may be true. I don't claim to be a SAN expert, and Brocade has years of experience building SANs. Both Brocade and Cisco have stated that they will support standards-based TRILL when the relevant standards documents have been ratified.

Regardless, if vendors are improving protocols beyond what is defined by standards, is that bad? Of course not. Like my audience, you probably want products that work and work well. If a vendor improves a protocol to make it work better, that is a win for you. You do want to know when that happens though. You want to know the real and potential impact that using a proprietary protocol will have, such as the ability or inability to integrate other products that are standards-based. Once you go down the proprietary path, the options for integrating products from other vendors can narrow considerably.

Case in point, Junipers QFabric is a highly proprietary networking product line that Juniper wants you to think is standards based. It's a little hand waving and distraction from what is really going on. Juniper's QFNode is a stand-alone top of rack switch which does support standards, but QFnode is not QFabric. You get the fabric part when you get the Interconnect and the director all cabled together using proprietary cabling. QFbaric has been described by Juniper representatives as a distributed chassis switch. If you look at QFabric as a distributed chassis switch in a diagram that neatly boxes it off, then yes, it appears to be what they claim. You can connect non-QFabric switches, Junipers or someone else's, at the edge using standard protocols and interfaces but inside QFabric is proprietary.

Here's the distraction. QFabric is meant to replace your ToR and core switches and form the basis of your network. It is not meant to be a distributed core that other things plug into (in fact, Juniper is trying to do away with network tiers altogether). Once you put QFabric in place, you have all kinds of interesting problems to face such as how would you put other features in the network that you would normally put in-line like load balancers, for instance? Or Oracle SQL*net listeners? Once you install QFabric, you have hitched your wagon to Juniper. Now QFabric may be all that it is cracked up to be and many people I respect and are not Juniper employees are excited about QFabric. My point is that if you find QFabric to fit your needs, then make sure you also determine what adopting a proprietary network is going to do elsewhere.

Sadly, getting to the truth can be hard. Salespeople (I am not singling out any particular vendor) will use "proprietary" to beat up their competition. I have seen it first-hand when sitting in on sales meetings. Vendors' bloggers will use it to cast fear, uncertainty and doubt on competitors. Few will talk about their own proprietary features unless pressed. "Proprietary" is not a dirty word, but it is used in dirty sales and marketing tactics. When you start hearing one vendor representative focus on open or proprietary features--their own or their competitors'--make sure you hold their feet to the fire and find out exactly what they mean. Then you can make an informed decision.