As I stated the issue is routers not the switchs.

I've personally never Juniper, but heard it's worth the money. Cisco is well-known and very reliable, And I have Never heard anything bad about Cisco products.

Actually, There is a big difference and anyone will tell you that uses Juniper and has used Cisco. Cisco can't handle a DDOS attack that well because, the filtering system that Cisco has isn't worth a shit to put it short.

Juniper has proven time and time again to have a better routing technology. Also WebPlazaHosting just to let you know that ThePlanet which your main site is hosted on is a Juniper Powered Network. They run Juniper M20's and I'm sure they love to share you with the experience they had with Cisco which wasn't pleasant. They switched to Juniper simply because, it's better.

When you have used both Cisco and Juniper then you can come in here and say Cisco is better cause, you honestly will not say that Cisco is better you wil say that JunoOS is alot better and always has been better.

Just take my advice and if you want a good network save yourself the hassle of a Cisco and get a Juniper. You won't regret it. Take it from someone that has years of experience in this industry and someone that has Engineers and have worked with NAC, Qwest, and Communitech and will all 3 will tell you that Juniper stomps the hell out of Cisco. Until then, I rest my case....

Honestly, i think if you ask this question in general, you need to read up on the hosting business first.

I have no problem with someone who wishes to learn the business but to ask such a question like "how do I start a datacenter" seems a bit childish to me.

If anything, if I was asked something like, "who do I contact in order to get fiber lines into my datacenter and what would be a rough estimate", that would most likely intrigue me to answer more seriously then the original question.

Honestly, I dont think anyone can just start a datacenter.
The monthly costs would be tremendous.

I think you have to first build up from:

reseller > dedicated > co-location > datacenter.

I think the majority of your hosting career would be in the co-location stage because you need to build up a large customer base in order to sustain the funds needed to run a datacenter.

Once you build that datacenter however, it might a lot easier to manage it, and offer more services like co-location.

wow. i didnt mean for it to be that long. =)

Who would pay $500 million for a damn switch? Not me..