Developer Forum

I've heard there are (presumeably illegal) imitation cisco routers out
there somewhere. Do they look like cisco routers, or have 'similar'
names like imitation rolex watches? If they look different and have
different names, what is/are some name(s) so I will recognize one if i
see one?

You may wish to investigate the Alliance for Gray Market and
Counterfeit Abatement:

http://www.yqcomputer.com/

Sincerely,

Brad Reese
BradReese.Com Cisco Repair Service Experts
http://www.yqcomputer.com/ #EXPERTS
1293 Hendersonville Road, Suite 17
Asheville, North Carolina USA 28803
USA/Canada Toll Free: 877-549-2680
International: 828-277-7272
United Kingdom: 44-20-70784294

Check out the Adtran NetVantas. They use a remarkably familiar interface.



Jonathan

Brad Reese: AGMA is a potentiall interesting site, but the best they
could do is tell me to buy from the manufacturer or authorized
distributors, and as a student buying for a home lab, I need to buy
cheap.

Jonathan: Adtran looks interesting, but they don't look like clones.

To recap:

1. Is it true that there are "clones" running probably non-licensed
copies of Cisco code out there in the used market?

2. If so, are they full cosmetic fakes, i.e. to a casual inspection to
they appear to be cisco routers, including having a cisco logo on them?

3. If not, what name do they go by? If cheap enough, it might be
interesting to have one just as a museum piece.

Personal aside: One would think that such clones would not exist past
the cisco AGS level, since I think newer machines have proprietary
hardware, which would be hard to replciate.

Hi,



Yes. Look for "Huawei". They copy lots of things, including phone
infrastructure equipment. One of their router series (I believe the
AR28-10/11 series) are copies of the Cisco 3600s.

No, they carry the Huawei logo and have their own housing design.

On the contrary. Cisco and all the other big names don't manufacture
their own stuff any more. They have companies like Flextronics do that.

If a product is engineered to be sent as a set of drawings and specs to
those companies, a company with similar capabilities can copy them very
easily. All they need is the information. And in fact have the same
outsourcer make their stuff on an adjacent production line. I find this
trend very disturbing. My own employer has similar problems, with
out-of-production mobile phones still being made (and sold) in quantity
by copycats.

- Markolf

well, in 2003, just some of one product's code was copied from Cisco
according to the article below, so this isn't what I was asking about.
I was curious about full 100% clones.

http://www.yqcomputer.com/

March 25, 2003 (12:08 PM EST)
techweb Huawei Promises To Delete Copied Cisco Code

By TechWeb.com

Huawei Technologies Co. says it will remove from its router software
code copied from competitor Cisco Systems Inc.

...

Huawei said the tainted code is confined to one module of the software
and won't be in new versions....

...