[tyingq]

At the moment, network switching and routing with open source products + commodity servers can't scale like Cisco and Juniper...if you want to have a fairly standard network (OSPF, BGP, etc).

Google, for example, is able to use commodity hardware because what they are routing works with a non-traditional setup...specifically a Clos network. That works for them only because their app is designed in a way that it can served up like that. It would not work for the typical kinds of traffic that you see at a normal company.

At a certain scale, barring unusual exceptions, you really do have to go with someone like Juniper/Cisco, as the ASIC based acceleration and other features aren't there in the commodity world.

There's certainly some things in progress that may change all of that, like Intel's DPDK, QuickAssist, etc.

[electrum]

The networking hardware that Facebook builds uses ASICs: https://code.facebook.com/posts/717010588413497/introducing-...

[w8rbt]

For core routing on fast networks, I tend to agree. Outside of that, commodity hardware and open source work just fine.

[tyingq]

I would add certain use cases of firewalls to that as well.