Cisco's new Licensing and why I'm leaving Cisco.

Cisco's new "SMART Licensing" is anything but that.  It needs each switch to call home every month.  If it fails three months in a row, the switch will shut down.  (hows that for "never fail networking"!  This does a couple of things that are inexcusable.

(1) It creates a major threat to the stability of your network.  It becomes the most critical item to monitor in your network (you need to make sure that it's calling home successfully or you go down hard!).

(2) It forces you to do the one thing you NEVER want to do in a production system: allow your management network direct internet access.

(3) It breaks the value proposition you had with cisco when you originally purchased your gear.  I paid an extra penny for their poor TAC support because I knew that I could recoup some of that cost when I was done with the gear by reselling it.  Now when I'm done with a cisco switch, it becomes nothing better then a boat anchor.