It's sad to hear how Cisco has fallen. I remember working on some early ISP networks in the 90's. Cisco was everywhere!

So was Oracle and Microsoft Windows.

If history has taught us anything. It’s that the measure of a successful product is usually more to do with its sales people.

Back then they only really did routing and switching, and those are still the only things that Cisco kind-of does well.

Almost every new product of theirs I’ve touched in the last 20 years has been trash, and even the R&S golden goose is being dragged in that direction with customer-hostile functionality like Smart Licensing and a general decline in quality.

Just because something is/was widely deployed does not mean it was good