So I had another large scale rollover last week. Removed a juniper router that was ancient, and replaced it with a new ASA. Once again, I was stuck with a question in my mind that I never have found an answer for. The Iboss I put in at the same time, made me finally come here and ask it.
 
Why do cisco routers and firewalls and the occasional other network device have all the ports on the back, but the switches have the ports on the front? Then to add to that, why do some of these routers and firewalls not have the appropriate mounting holes to flip them and move the ports to the front? The Iboss has all its ports on the back like a server and has no way to move the ears to the other side so that they face front short of drilling and tapping the case.
 
I have to admit, this annoys me greatly from a cable management standpoint to have 2-3 cables that have to go around the sides, between equipment in the middle of the rack, or over the top of the rack. 
 
Is there any reasoning as to why they do this? Junipers have the ports on the front heck even fortinet has them on the front. and most others that I have dealt with do the same.

It might have to be the times when you need access to the ports. With switches, you are dealing with potentially 48 ports or more, depending on the model of the switch, so gaining access to them for ease of connecting/disconnecting the Ethernet cables when adding/removing host devices and you might be dealing with that more than with routers/firewalls.
 
With routers/firewalls, generally their ports doesn't need to be accessed most of the time as you usually make your necessary connections when first receiving the device and the connections for the router/firewall wouldn't be as much as a switch and sometimes you won't need to plug much of the host devices to it unless they're intended for administration purposes.
 
Although, most of the times you would make SSL, console, or any sessions to all of the devices for configuration. I guess "cable management" is what came to Cisco's mind, but we don't know. It does sound inconsistent from my view. But you still have status lights at the front of every devices for diagnostics.