Cisco and Arista Settle Their Lawsuit

Cisco and Arista have agreed on a ceasefire regarding their ongoing legal battle. A joint statement regarding the matter is outlined below:

"Cisco and Arista have come to an agreement which resolves existing litigation and demonstrates their commitment to the principles of IP protection. They have agreed that, with limited exceptions, no new litigation will be brought over patents or copyrights related to existing products, for five years. In addition, for three years, they will use an arbitration process to address any patent issues regarding new products. As part of this agreement, Arista will be making a $400 million payment to Cisco, is committed to maintaining the product modifications it made as a result of previous rulings and will be making limited changes to further differentiate its user interfaces from Cisco's."

The result can be seen as a positive for both parties, even if Arista is out of pocket $400 million. Cisco was able to protect their technology while maintaining their extensive network of users. Arista has steadily grown its user base and developing enterprise success; Gartner has even shortlisted Arista as a solution for large-scale environments. Regardless of your organizational decision, NMIS will be able to monitor the performance of both Cisco and Arista devices, and over 10,000 other vendors too.

Related reading: Why Companies Need to Invest in Network Monitoring