I'm not with GitHub.

Please don't take this the wrong way – can you explain some of your experiences with Cisco?

I sense you're pretty loyal to Cisco. I've had the exact opposite experience, getting rock solid uptime and no-compromises performance from commodity hardware. My experience with Cisco is typified by the IOS command line: hard to use, even harder to hire someone who makes it easy, and every minute you feel the pull on your wallet. The one place Cisco seems to shine is at the boardroom table when negotiating contract renewals. :)

Again, I don't mean to offend.