[joelmoses]

I thought I might weigh in here as a consumer of both Nokia and Crossbeam hardware. I've had experience with the low, middle, and high-end solutions from both companies, and can say that the Linux-based Crossbeam platform is typically easier to deal with from a support perspective than the Nokia is.

As far as quality goes, we've run into one or two snags on our Crossbeam gear, but nothing as serious as the performance problems on high-rate interfaces we've experienced in later IPSO builds. The latest C-series gear -- specifically the C25 -- looks very good. Dual power supplies, slotted interface cards, and dual mirrored hard-drives in vibration-mount sliding trays. The only real disadvantage at this point is the somewhat anemic dynamic routing support and the lack of a "pretty" configuration interface.

I've always viewed Nokia's refusal to adopt a Linux-based OS as an issue with the platform. Check Point does all their development on Linux first (SecurePlatform saw to that). This forces Check Point to, by necessity, treat the Nokia platform as a "target build" and not a reference platform. Because of this, I've seen situations where Nokia and Check Point, when faced with a particular issue, point the finger at each other and refuse to solve the issue. ("It's an OS issue... It's a Check Point issue...")