Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Cisco's Internet Protocol-based (IP) networking solutions are the foundation of the Internet and most corporate, education, and government networks around the world. Cisco provides the broadest line of solutions for transporting data, voice and video within buildings, across campuses, or around the world.
-- Cisco's corporate description

They are a huge company, providing almost all of the InterNet with the routers, hubs, switches and FiddlyThings it needs to run.

They're the creators of IOS.

They are very well known for providing reliable hardware, excellent service, and will replace any hardware, any time, no questions asked, in less than 4 hours1?. They're also well known for not being cheap. However, if you are running a critical business operation on the InterNet, you can probably afford to pay for a box that will work constantly, consistently, and will never fail. In fact, you can pay for two, just in case something happens to the first one, oh and a redundant power supply that can run both machines if theirs fails.

They also provide high level networking qualifications that are recognised world wide:

Network Installation and support

Consisting of CCNA, CCNP, CCIE (Routing and Switching)

Network Engineering and Design

Consisting of CCDA, CCDP

Communications & Services

Consisting of CCIP, CCIE

(Where the 'CC' part stands for "Cisco Certified ...".)

In the Waikato it is possible to study for your CCNA and CCNP qualifications at WINTEC (Waikato Institute of Technology). Courses start at the beginning of each semester.

While they have more market penetration in their market than MicrosoftCorporation have in theirs, they aren't considered to be abusing their monopoly by most people. As a recent vulnerability in IOS has shown, though, a MonoCulture still isn't necessarily a good thing.

1? They put out an apology on Sept 11, when all the planes were grounded and they were unable to meet this requirement. They've since fixed this so they are no longer dependant on planes.

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