loopback0 – Douglas Gourlay's Blog Data Centers, Virtualization, and Cloud Computing

Hello Gorgeous! Best of Networking Industrial Design

This is not networking equipment either...

You could also title this one 'Things I'd like to Change Part 2/N'

I was reading NetworkWorld today, (now please don't ask me why I am sitting in Rio de Janeiro reading NetworkWorld (no offense John Gallant, Jim Duffy, Brad Reese, etc)  It is just that most people do not usually associate beaches in Brazil with blogging and reading NetworkWorld, scandalous I know...) and anyhow, I was reading NetworkWorld today and I saw that the top read article was title '15 of the Greatest Tech Designs Ever'.  I was intrigued!

So I click through item, by item, by item.  I saw Aibo's and headphones, and phones and Blu-Ray players.  One question occurred to me - "Where are the NETWORK devices guys?"  The closest I saw was a malformed toaster-oven from 3Com named Audrey that suffered a premature demise in the dot com bust. This got me wondering - what are the best designed NETWORK devices?  You know, Switches, Routers, Firewalls, Load Balancers, Optical Transport, WiFi Access Points, etc!  You know, the good stuff!!!!

Now, I have my own opinions and will kick off the comments with a few items that I like, but I would really like to know what the best designed network products are.  One caveat - let's not focus 'under the hood'.  I don't care for the purposes of this discussion thread about what chipset it used, whether it actually even came close to the performance numbers the vendors touted, or whether it had AC or DC power supplies.  I know this stuff all matters, but I am being exceedingly shallow- I just want to focus on the aesthetics, physical functionality, the design, and how usable the product is.  Give some reasons you like it!  Also, what are the worst?  What lessons can be learned there about how NOT to design a product?

dg