ARE THOSE ROUTERS OR NOT?

One of my favorite stories about my boys when they were still little and cute is this:

Back in 2006-2007, I was teaching IPv6 classes almost every week. Cisco IPv6 classes that is. I had become some sort of expert in IPv6, title that you get when you teach a class several times. Then one day, we were asked by someone from Juniper who wanted to train his team on IPv6, whether we could teach them.

I was really honest, and told him: “I know IPv6 very well! but I don’t think I can even spell Junos correctly!” I guess “knowing IPv6 very well” was good enough because he decided to do the training with us.

He provided a stack of J2320 routers for me to learn about Junos and prepare for the class, which as you can imagine was kind of cool! New toys are always fun!

Now, I had been doing Cisco training for a while, and my kids who were 3 and 5 at the time had heard about Cisco, and seen Cisco equipment in my house, since they were born. Well, the oldest even before he was born, as I kept teaching until I was 8 months pregnant with him.

Sooo, I come home with the J2320’s one afternoon, and as I am unloading them and placing them in the garage, little 3-year old Diego sees me, and runs inside screaming: “Rodrigo, Rodrigo, mommy brought new computers home”. 

Rodrigo, who is 5, comes running down the stairs, goes to the garage, looks at the routers, turns to his brother, and says (with his little arrogant attitude):

“NO Diego, those are not computers, those are routers!!! Mommy, tell Diego that those are Cisco routers”. 

I smile, look at him and say:

“Well, they are routers! but they are not Cisco, they are Juniper”.

Oh, the look in his face!! He no longer understood the world! “What are you talking about mommy” kind of look! He looks at me very confused, almost upset:

“Juniper ???”.

I explain to him that there are different vendors that make routers and that Cisco and Juniper both make routers. 

Well, that seemed to make perfect sense to him! So, he turns to his brother and bragging he says:

“See Diego? I told you they were routers!!!”