#1 most frequent
United States of America
69.1%2,187 installations of 3,167
What is Cisco IOS?
Cisco IOS, presently in its 15th edition, is a network operating system for service providers and enterprises alike.
Categories & Use Cases
Product Demos
Who Buys & Uses Cisco IOS
#2 most frequent
Canada
4.4%139 installations of 3,167
#3 most frequent
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
4.4%139 installations of 3,167
Cisco IOS Is Still King
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Cisco IOS is the cornerstone of our network infrastructure. As a network engineer for my organization, there isn't a single day (or maybe even a couple of hours) that I'm not interacting with Cisco IOS in some capacity. My team and I use it to troubleshoot network issues, make network changes, fulfill user requests, plan network infrastructure changes, monitor device environmentals, apply configuration macros, check for system resource utilization (e.g. CPU, memory), and so much more.
Pros
- Cisco IOS image upgrades usually go very smooth due to thorough quality assurance software testing from Cisco. It also helps that Cisco has very helpful white papers that helps walk you through the upgrade process in easy to follow steps.
- Does a great job of providing network device health data via the various Cisco IOS commands
- It's a fast operating system which makes it a dream to work with
Cons
- By this point, there are several "flavors" of the Cisco IOS such as XE, XR, and the standard Cisco IOS. While they are all fairly similar, there does exist syntax differences between them. It would be ideal if at some point in the future, Cisco is able to unify all of them into one standard operating system which would use the same syntax across all platforms.
- While overall Cisco does a great job of QA'ing their IOS, no matter the release, there's always some minor bugs. I think it's important that Cisco continue to pour resources into their QA team to test their software.
- While I'm very familiar with the graphical readouts of "show processes cpu history" I would love for Cisco to eventually find a more intuitive way to display this data. I can't begin to count how many times I've had to teach more entry level (and even mid level) engineers how this graph is interpreted.
- I do wish that Cisco had something similar to Juniper's "commit check" or "commit confirmed". This helps validate the changes you're about to apply, and catch errors, so that you have a better idea of the impact of the change.
Return on Investment
- Cisco IOS has had a positive impact in how quickly we're able to mitigate issues and outages due to how fast it's able to display the exact data we're looking for and because how the relevant that data is.
- Having a stable operating system means less network issues and less outages. It goes without saying how valuable this has been for our organization.
- Fantastic TAC support from Cisco! In the rare instances that we're faced with a very complex issue, or unfamiliar territory, Cisco TAC has historically done a phenomenal job of assisting us and getting us sorted!
Usability
Alternatives Considered
ArubaOS, Arista Extensible Operating System (EOS), Juniper EX Series Switches and Juniper MX Series
Other Software Used
Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention, Palo Alto Networks Advanced URL Filtering, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Cisco IOS briefed
Pros
- User friendly CLI.
- Quick fixes for critical bugs.
- Longer uptime.
Cons
- No good element managers like Nokia.
- Load balancing functionalities are not the best.
- Memory issues.
Most Important Features
- Switching, routing
- ACLs , TACACS
- Vlan, tunnel protocols, VTP
Return on Investment
- Great uptimes on proven availability/reliability.
- Longevity of these switches ensures great ROI.
- Easy to learn for new users.
Alternatives Considered
Cisco IOS XR7, Cisco 5500 Series Network Convergence System (NCS 5500) and Cisco Nexus
Other Software Used
Junos Network Operating System (Junos OS)