can't really say that.
we have personally administered around 180 different oracle databases distributed worldwide, serving around 300 + websites and apps and data is cross-driven ( extracted from / loaded into) 
across every other major database vendor.
We never had any major issue with sql*net.

ora-12154 is a very generic issue.
It needs some understanding about oracle.
The issue may be anything from syntax error to sqlnet internals.
MOST frequent one is MISCONFIGURATION of service_name,sid and host.
Note that, oracle 8 uses sid, 8i and 9i service_name.

please post the exact message, we can give a try