Angry Cisco cuts Cabletron cord

San Jose, Calif.

Cabletron Systems, Inc. has a reputation for being the bad boy of the network industry, but this time the company may have gone too far.

Angered with Cabletron for what it viewed as a smear campaign, Cisco Systems, Inc. is terminating contracts that allow Cabletron to offer Cisco's widely used Internetwork Operating System (IOS) routing software.

"We've pulled their rights to license IOS," said Alex Mendez, Cisco's vice president of marketing for enterprise networking. "We want healthy competition, but Cabletron has gone beyond that with the things they're doing."

For example, Cabletron has been running print ads in trade publications criticizing the Cisco Catalyst 5000 switch for being a bottleneck in an enterprise network and showing the device stuffed inside a soda bottle. Analysts also say Cabletron has been circulating news clippings about the recent America Online (AOL) net crash, which pinpoint Cisco routers as the culprit.

Cabletron officials say they never engaged in a formal campaign to criticize Cisco based on the AOL incident.

But what apparently irked Cisco most, and prompted the contract termination, was Cabletron's presentation at NetWorld+Interop last month. There, Cabletron showed a videotape of a boxing match in eotape of a boxing match in which the lean, sculpted Cabletron Crusher pummeled the old, flabby Cisco Kid into submission.

Cabletron licenses IOS for routing modules that fit into Cabletron switches and hubs. The company sells about $7 million worth of these modules annually.

Cabletron claims, due to recent acquisitions, it will now be able to offer its own routing technology to fill the IOS gap.

Cisco notified Cabletron the week of Sept. 30 of its intention to terminate relations with its six-year IOS business partner.

At press time, Cabletron President and CEO Robert Levine was scrambling to patch things up with Cisco, a Cabletron spokesman said.

Customers and analysts disapprove of Cabletron's conduct. "It's a shame but not unexpected," said John Scoggin, chief technical advisor at Delmarva Power in Wilmington, Del. "I would have done the same thing [as Cisco]. It was an immature display."

"It sounds like somebody stepped outside the lines and is getting spanked," said Virginia Brooks, director of network research at Aberdeen Group, Inc. in Boston. "It's really the second-class citizens that do their marketing at the expense of their competition."

Cabletron officials said they are disappointed with Cisco's action but not embarrassed. They said their marketing tactics are no different than other company's.

"We stand behind the argument that we were making of the value of virtual networking and the value of our switching platforms [vs. routers]," said Wade Appelman, director of advanced product engineering at Cabletron. "We [offered IOS] purely as a convenience to our customers. It really hurts the Cabletron and Cisco customers.