Boise State ditches Cisco DNS

"I have no complaints whatsoever," Dragone says. "I like all the reports that you can look at. The other thing I really like is the tool for checking your DNS database before you deploy your configuration. That has really come in handy."

Operating modern appliances is a lot easier than keeping aging software running, Dragone says.

"There are savings headache wise," Dragone says. "I spent an entire week in December trying to figure something out that never got resolved. There were a lot of band-aid fixes on the old system to the point where we were shuffling around where the DHCP was coming from."

Cisco declined to comment for this article.

Branko Miskov, director of product management at BlueCat Networks, says more universities like Boise State are migrating to appliances for DNS and DHCP services. Among BlueCat's higher ed customers are UC Berkeley, UCLA, the University of Michigan and the University of Calgary. This segment now represents more than 10% of BlueCat's sales.