re: Cisco Wins Round 1 Against Huawei> I have worked for Cisco in India. I know of > people who have been given offers in Huawei. > However the following facts are true: - > > 1. Huawei was giving a 50% hike to even > people who had no(or very little) experience > in the field. > > 2. I know Huawei has bought protocol stacks > from other third party vendors. If Cisco has > bought the same, similar bugs could result > > 3. There has never been any case "code copying" > for Cisco in India, although they have had > development centres in India for the last > 8 years now. > > -Veemee
All of IGRP, HSRP, EIGRP, ODR are deviced and coded in San Jose or Boston, nothing to do with Bangalore. They are maintained in the Cisco US office even now. So Huawei hiring in Bangalore should not be related to this being used in Huawei products.
re: Cisco Wins Round 1 Against HuaweiEven if one accepts the assertion that each of these patents is for relatively trivial technology, that takes nothing away from the legal sanctity of these patents.
If Huawei had concerns similar to yours, they could have contested the patent. Not gone ahead and copied it!
It's straightforward if you understand "rule of law".
__________________________________________________ Of all the patents mentioned by Cisco, namely, IGRP, HSRP, RTP used in EIGRP, ODR, RTP is the most complex of the 4 patents, IGRP and ODR in IP networking are like "Hello World" program of CS101.
But, this RTP in EIGRP is completely internal to EIGRP, I mean from the CLI or using the router, you may not notice its exisitence, how did Cisco claim Huawei copied it is a puzzle.
re: Cisco Wins Round 1 Against HuaweiWRT IGRP/EIGRP it is worthy of note that a generation of North American Cisco competitors by in large (IPSILON EGIRP+ aside) stayed well clear of IGRP/EIGRP. Partly because Cisco does not make it easy to understand the implementation (it is their proprietary technology after all), but partly because by North American standards, the proproetary nature of this technology was respected. It should be further noted that said competitors had plenty of motivation to offer IGRP/EIGRP given the installed base, and everything that implies.
To say Cisco has no claim on this technology is to in some sense state that Huawei has an insight that a generation of Cisco competitors did not. Possible, but not sure I would be quick to lean in that direction without hearing something from Huawei about the issue.
As for 5,088,032, while many of the claims seem general (this is not unusual for patents), claim 3 at least (haven't read the entire patent) seems fairly specific and the patent (and actual implementation) certainly reference metrics, combined use of said metrics, and algortihms not commonly implemented in other similar routing protocols. So I am not so sure this patent is as trivial as some would suggest. Regardless, as stated before, common functionality, with a specific and new design, is patentable in and of it self.
At any rate, the patent process is far from perfect and we will not know the strength of these patents (one way or the other) until actually tested in court.
re: Cisco Wins Round 1 Against HuaweiInteresting. Patent #5,088,032 is Len Bosack's. That goes back to the 80s -- before Cisco was a public company. It was one of those patents that Stanford and Cisco got into a tussle about.
lightdim wrote: "This is a patent that everyone networking company is probably using. The only reason CISCO is not sueing everyone is probably because they know they can not win. But then again you might win against a foreign corporation in Texas."
You're probably right. Maybe BBN might have some prior art? But I think this is the first time that Cisco has ever used it's patent portfolio offensively (they've used it defensively to stave off lawsuits from Lucent et. al.).
re: Cisco Wins Round 1 Against HuaweiI wrote: "Interesting. Patent #5,088,032 is Len Bosack's. That goes back to the 80s -- before Cisco was a public company. It was one of those patents that Stanford and Cisco got into a tussle about." _________________________________________________
sigint replied: "Please elaborate. What exactly happened? Could we dare conclude that Huawei was merely fishing in already murky waters?"
Well, I just looked up 5,088,032 and it was submitted in Jan 1988 (later than I thought). Not much murk. Bill Yeager, at Stanford, created an early router to hook up the Medical Dept network to the Computer Sciences Dept network (there had been router-like boxes before this -- back to Wes Clark and his IMP). But Len Bosack took the Yeager creation and improved upon it. Then he and his wife Sandy founded cisco in '84 (later renamed Cisco with a capital C). Some of the old-timers at Cisco told me that at one point Stanford claimed that Len and Cisco had taken Stanford intellectual property (since Yeager had created the first router on Stanford time, and Len and improved the router on Stanford time). I don't know if it ever got beyond the nastygram stage. But Cisco and Stanford settled their differences. Kaching!
re: Cisco Wins Round 1 Against Huaweibeowulf888: Interesting. Patent #5,088,032 is Len Bosack's. That goes back to the 80s -- before Cisco was a public company. It was one of those patents that Stanford and Cisco got into a tussle about. _________________________________________________
Please elaborate. What exactly happened? Could we dare conclude that Huawei was merely fishing in already murky waters?
re: Cisco Wins Round 1 Against Huawei<quote> This is IGRP, almost identical to RIPv2, it is a shame such crap can be patented. </quote>
Your comparison is unfair since RIPv2 is a much younger protocol. You should compare IGRP with RIPv1 to be fair. If you do that comparison then you will find for example that IGRP behaves much better (consumes less resources) in wide area networks. RIP was designed for use in local area networks, and IGRP was designed with wide area networks in mind. Back then IGRP was a superior protocol. BTW WAN-awareness is missing from RIPv2 as well.
If you want to compare RIPv2 then you should compare it with its "generation" of routeing protocols (EIGRP, OSPF, ISIS). You would still find that RIP is a very limited protocol. The real beef is in the comparison of EIGRP, OSPF, and ISIS.
re: Cisco Wins Round 1 Against HuaweiAs I think there a lots of points, legal, moral, and customs are involved in the Cisco/Huawei case. One of the first things: Could the Cisco have obtained the disputed patents in a fair way? Does it have the capability to do patentable research? Who wrote the patent? Are there drafts of the patents and its refinements? Given the fact the US patent office is willing to grant patents on bird cages, was the descrption in RFC 1889 ort RFC 1990 a legitimate technology. If it is a derived concept (collection of known works) assembled from the works and contributions of other people, it would not be deemed as a patentable technology by any fair court system.
Cisco does not wish Huawei to succeed in the market place as their products are of the same or higher quality than that produced by Cisco.
I also think that the cort system would have to decide if Cisco complies with the international patent filing stndards.
Cisco has gone to the extreme to claim patent violation. If AT&T/Bell Labs had enforced violation of patent laws on SS7( signaling Technology), Cisco would not even have a technology like VoIP. It would be interesting to findout what violations have been committed by Cisco in its product lines including over 80 companies it acquired in the lat 3-4 years.
I think the time has come when patent system needs to be abolished from the world.
Our Eye Surgeons borrowed eye laser surgery to correct vision problems from the former Soviet Union. To the best of my knowledge, we have not a dime to the Soviet Union for appropriating this technology.
Thank God,IBM did notfile a patent on Super Computers otherwise countries like India would have never been able to build computers.
About 90% of the countries in the world have no patent system as it is considered exploitation. We must be again frateful to God that we have not filed patents on mathematical principles.
One of the patents that Cisco claims violation is RFC 1889 on RTP. I did not see much of anything that is patentable on RTP.
Finally I hope Hyuawei will be left alone so that it can pursue it business and scientific goals. It would not do much good for our own interests.
re: Cisco Wins Round 1 Against HuaweiBobbyMax wrote...
"Cisco does not wish Huawei to succeed in the market place as their products are of the same or higher quality than that produced by Cisco."
Judging by your history of having no idea of what you're talking about, I'll assume that principal applies here. In fact, I now believe that Huawei's stuff is crap.
"It would be interesting to findout what violations have been committed by Cisco in its product lines including over 80 companies it acquired in the lat 3-4 years."
So...I guess you believe that Cisco's going after a Chinese company just because its Chinese, right? And what about you're constant complaining about "junky startups with nothing new" bullcrap? I guess that doesn't apply to Huawei because its Chinese, right? (And the fact that you are Chinese is only a coincidence, right?)
"I think the time has come when patent system needs to be abolished from the world."
Ah. SO your motivation is obvious. You think Huawei should have the right to steal from an American company you've done nothing but bash over the last few years on these boards, correct? (I'll bypass the absurdity of the remark and all that a no-patents world would mean in terms of innovation and revenue generation.)
"Our Eye Surgeons borrowed eye laser surgery to correct vision problems from the former Soviet Union. To the best of my knowledge, we have not a dime to the Soviet Union for appropriating this technology."
You should defnitely think about switching off of the generic thorazine back to the name brand stuff. Are you aware that, in almost any nation in the world, patents EXPIRE? Also, if the Soviets did not file a patent in the US (which I strongly doubt), then a Soviet Patent is useless here (likewise, a US patent is of no use in Europe).
"Thank God,IBM did notfile a patent on Super Computers otherwise countries like India would have never been able to build computers."
An amazing nonsequitur. "Booby Speaks" couldn't not have come up with anything better.
"About 90% of the countries in the world have no patent system as it is considered exploitation."
90% of the countries in the world? WHere did you get this number from?
re: Cisco Wins Round 1 Against HuaweiGO_PHOTON wrote...
"You always tell BobbyMax to shut up, I think you should SHUT UP!"
Well, just in case you have a brain, let me respond.
First of all, it is easy to believe from what I reply to Booby that I may disagree with, for instance, the notion that Cisco's patent defense has no merit. Let me state for the record that I do not believe that. Cisco's claims may or may not have merit, depnding on the particularities of the patents, patent law, and the routing industry.
In Booby's post (as always) Booby was claiming that Cisco's claims were completely without merit. and he implied that Cisco was suing over the TCP and IP protocols themselves. As usual, Booby blasted a company (and individuals) without doing any research other than reading portions of the Lightreading article. He consistently exposes his mindless biases again and again, and when asked for specifics and facts and references, he NEVER replies (I don't think I've ever seen him say where he gets his numbers from, and some of them are wildly wrong by orders of magnitude.)
This was a perfect example. When I asked him about the specific protocols he believed were being contested, he never answered, other than eventually to state that the "world's patent system should be abolished".
Go read his posts, and again and again you will see the same patern of bashing, prejudice, and bias, and with no accountability: he hides under thick cloaks of anonymity. (I post with my initials, and many industry folks know exactly who I am and call me after I post.)
> people who have been given offers in Huawei.
> However the following facts are true: -
>
> 1. Huawei was giving a 50% hike to even
> people who had no(or very little) experience
> in the field.
>
> 2. I know Huawei has bought protocol stacks
> from other third party vendors. If Cisco has
> bought the same, similar bugs could result
>
> 3. There has never been any case "code copying"
> for Cisco in India, although they have had
> development centres in India for the last
> 8 years now.
>
> -Veemee
All of IGRP, HSRP, EIGRP, ODR are deviced
and coded in San Jose or Boston, nothing to
do with Bangalore. They are maintained in
the Cisco US office even now. So Huawei
hiring in Bangalore should not be related
to this being used in Huawei products.