[jdsully]

Cisco was a very similar situation actually. Lots of "routers" out there (way more than other brands making GPUs), but the cisco stuff just "worked" in corporate environments and had the best interop with the rest of the network.

Ultimately though people figured out the other stuff and while cisco is still very popular for core routers they are no longer the only reasonable option.

The stock has only just now recovered 25 years later from the .com crash.