AVAYA hardware vs CISCO hardware

[telklass]

Good morning all !

Does AVAYA hardware will match with CISCO hardware ?
For example i will have to build network with these different hardware AVAYA Stwitch + CISCO Router or vise versa , also does CISCO cmd will work on an AVAYA hardware ?

Look forward to your reply .

Thanks ~

 

[jhengel]

I would say on the hardware level the products are similar in quality.

We deploy nearly all of our networks with a combination of Avaya & Cisco gear. Nearly always Avaya Voice, generally with an Avaya ERS (switch) but often also with Cisco Catalyst (IOS switch). Nearly 100% of the time these systems are sitting behind a Cisco firewall, and we integrate a large number of the features between the platforms.

As long as you follow the "industry standard" methods of provisioning IOS for anything that directly relates to voice (for example, setup LLDP in leui of CDP) there is never going to be a permanent issue that can't be fixed by software. Cisco layer 2 and layer 3 devices can be provisioned to QoS and transport Avaya voice with no issue whatsoever.

Cisco's IOS CLI cannot be loaded on Avaya switches in any way, Avaya has their own command line. That being said, it is very similar to IOS but many commands vary (sometimes more drastically than others). Your standard "enable, conf t, write mem, etc" all function properly on Avaya CLI. Once you get into provisioning VLan's and tagging there will be more difference, you don't issue the "switchport mode trunk, switchport access vlan X" commands in the same way that IOS does. Avaya generally uses untagpvidonly for example, but there are some solid Avaya CLI cheat sheets out there.