Gregory's Server@gsuberland It's all in the details. Early hot-swap linecards in cisco routers were like that. It'd work just fine.. MOST of the time. But that 1 out 50 attempts, you'd slide in the board, all the indicator lights would flash, the major alarm buzzer would sound and you knew it was bad news.
Don't even try to swap a line card with a different flavor board. Weird data structure problems you'd experence maybe hours later.
It was all new; Cisco and their ISP customers were learning together.
@lmamakos sounds about right tbh. I didn't join until 2015-ish when they acquired the company I worked for, but their initial foray into security services offerings was, uh, rather inauspicious. they just had no clue when it came to delivering those kinds of projects. took a lot of work from a few dedicated people to get it stumbling off the ground, several of whom ended up doing more than one job. sounds like they're doing better now though.