Re: 10GE router resource

[Greg VILLAIN]

On Mar 24, 2008, at 10:23 AM, user user wrote:


Hi everybody!

I find myself in the market for some 10GE routers. As
I don't buy these everyday, I was wondering if any of
you guys had any good resources for evaluating
different vendors and models. I'm mainly thinking
about non-vendor resources as the vendorspeak sites
are not that hard to find.

Also I'd love to hear recommendatios for "budget" 10GE
routers. The "budget" router would be used to hook up
client networks through one 10GE interface and connect
to different transit providers through two 10GE
interfaces.

- Zed


Hiya,

When it comes to budget, force10 are good. I wouldn't be able to  
confirm if they're worth performance-wise.
I'd strongly suggest Foundry, I'm a big fan of their kits, price-wise  
and performance-wise, provided you do not need rocket-science features.

MLX/XMR models will surely do the trick perfectly.

When it comes to router purchasing habits, we all tend to get  
religious...
Bottom line is that most of the 'regular' vendors (namely Cisco,  
Juniper, Foundry, Force10, Extreme, Riverstone) implement pretty much  
the same set of features, which are all IETF/IEEE normalized, meaning  
if you don't need proprietary features (and you'll wish you don't),  
any router will be fine, the only difference will come from:

- the chassis being non-blocking or not (i.e. backplane design)
- the price per port
- the operating OS
- the feeling you'll get with the salesperson, and the reputation of  
their Support Teams.

- vendor specific features such as Flow Sampling
To make it simple, most vendors have an IOS like OS, except Juniper  
which has a really clever and elegant OS, but are very pricey.

Foundry and Force10 have the cheapest price per port
Cisco does only Netflow, Foundry & Force10 only SFlow (which is a true  
standard) and I think Juniper does JFlow
Cisco's kits are packed with proprietary protocols (HSRP and GLBP  
instead of VRRP, their own ethernet trunking, EIGRP as their own and  
yet extremely efficient IGP, TCL scriptable CLI...) , some of them are  
really good, some are crappy, but I suggest you'd stick with IEEE/IETF  
protocol to avoid future trouble.


One thing: RSTP/802-1w is very (very, very, very) not often  
interoperable between vendors who all have their own interpretation of  
the norm and can quickly turn into a nightmare.
I'd strongly suggest try&buys if (R)STP interoperability is required,  
but I'm a little paranoid :)


Greg VILLAIN
Independant Network & Telco Architecture Consultant

Re: 10GE router resource

[Chris Grundemann]

Greg has laid out a great bit of information and I would like to add just
one possibility to the list of budget 10GE routers: Vyatta.  According to a
recent press release from that company (
http://www.vyatta.com/about/pressreleases.php?id=51) they offer a product
that is "2 to 3X higher performance at a cost savings of more than 75
percent" when compared to Cisco's 7200.  Unfortunately I have not had the
opportunity to test or use the Vyatta routers yet; I have however
successfully used other open-source Linux based routers in the past with
great success.  If  you are looking for a truly budget 10GE router, they may
be worth adding to the list and looking into.

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 10:36 AM, Greg VILLAIN <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>
>
> On Mar 24, 2008, at 10:23 AM, user user wrote:
> >
> > Hi everybody!
> >
> > I find myself in the market for some 10GE routers. As
> > I don't buy these everyday, I was wondering if any of
> > you guys had any good resources for evaluating
> > different vendors and models. I'm mainly thinking
> > about non-vendor resources as the vendorspeak sites
> > are not that hard to find.
> >
> > Also I'd love to hear recommendatios for "budget" 10GE
> > routers. The "budget" router would be used to hook up
> > client networks through one 10GE interface and connect
> > to different transit providers through two 10GE
> > interfaces.
> >
> > - Zed
>
> Hiya,
>
> When it comes to budget, force10 are good. I wouldn't be able to
> confirm if they're worth performance-wise.
> I'd strongly suggest Foundry, I'm a big fan of their kits, price-wise
> and performance-wise, provided you do not need rocket-science features.
> MLX/XMR models will surely do the trick perfectly.
>
> When it comes to router purchasing habits, we all tend to get
> religious...
> Bottom line is that most of the 'regular' vendors (namely Cisco,
> Juniper, Foundry, Force10, Extreme, Riverstone) implement pretty much
> the same set of features, which are all IETF/IEEE normalized, meaning
> if you don't need proprietary features (and you'll wish you don't),
> any router will be fine, the only difference will come from:
> - the chassis being non-blocking or not (i.e. backplane design)
> - the price per port
> - the operating OS
> - the feeling you'll get with the salesperson, and the reputation of
> their Support Teams.
> - vendor specific features such as Flow Sampling
> To make it simple, most vendors have an IOS like OS, except Juniper
> which has a really clever and elegant OS, but are very pricey.
> Foundry and Force10 have the cheapest price per port
> Cisco does only Netflow, Foundry & Force10 only SFlow (which is a true
> standard) and I think Juniper does JFlow
> Cisco's kits are packed with proprietary protocols (HSRP and GLBP
> instead of VRRP, their own ethernet trunking, EIGRP as their own and
> yet extremely efficient IGP, TCL scriptable CLI...) , some of them are
> really good, some are crappy, but I suggest you'd stick with IEEE/IETF
> protocol to avoid future trouble.
>
> One thing: RSTP/802-1w is very (very, very, very) not often
> interoperable between vendors who all have their own interpretation of
> the norm and can quickly turn into a nightmare.
> I'd strongly suggest try&buys if (R)STP interoperability is required,
> but I'm a little paranoid :)
>
> Greg VILLAIN
> Independant Network & Telco Architecture Consultant
>
>
>


-- 
"Those who do not create the future they want must endure the future they
get."
~Draper L. Kaufman, Jr.
--

Re: 10GE router resource

[William Herrin]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 1:59 PM, Chris Grundemann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Greg has laid out a great bit of information and I would like to add just
> one possibility to the list of budget 10GE routers: Vyatta.  According to a
> recent press release from that company
> (http://www.vyatta.com/about/pressreleases.php?id=51) they offer a product
> that is "2 to 3X higher performance at a cost savings of more than 75
> percent" when compared to Cisco's 7200.

"Vyatta operates at Layer 3 wire speed across three Gigabit Ethernet
ports in full mesh when forwarding 512-byte frames or higher."

3x1 GE << 1x10 GE

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William D. Herrin  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
3005 Crane Dr. .. Web: 
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

Re: 10GE router resource

[Eddy Martinez]

On Mar 25, 2008, at 1:42 PM, Robert Boyle wrote:



At 12:36 PM 3/25/2008, Greg VILLAIN wrote:
I'd strongly suggest Foundry, I'm a big fan of their kits, price-wise
and performance-wise, provided you do not need rocket-science  
features.

MLX/XMR models will surely do the trick perfectly.


I agree too. They still have a bit of development to do on the IPv6  
side, but they are getting there. We are using them with Cat 65XXs  
with SXF Sup720-3BXLs and XMRs. We run ISIS, BGP, and BFD.  
Everything they say works really does. We have been very pleased.  
Definitely put them on your short list. The price per port can't be  
beat and their support is stellar. If you want to reliably route  
IPv4 and IPv6 at wire speeds regardless of packet size or rate and  
optionally filter at wire speed too on all ports then they make a  
great box.


-Robert


Totally agree.
Foundry support is top notch and the boxes do deliver the promised  
performance.


The headroom is impressive when the CPU is at 99%. Somehow *cough* we  
(me) pegged
the CPU on the Server Irons and still had a very very responsive  
console. Was able to find
the self inflicted error and fix the problem quickly. Out testers on  
the outside say they did not

notice a performance degradation.

Foundry's performance and support make the price a clear value.

I've only experienced two flavors, Cisco and Foundry.

Eddy

Re: 10GE router resource

[Chris Grundemann]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 1:56 PM, William Herrin
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 1:59 PM, Chris Grundemann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Greg has laid out a great bit of information and I would like to add just
> > one possibility to the list of budget 10GE routers: Vyatta.  According to a
> > recent press release from that company
> > (http://www.vyatta.com/about/pressreleases.php?id=51) they offer a product
> > that is "2 to 3X higher performance at a cost savings of more than 75
> > percent" when compared to Cisco's 7200.
>
>
> "Vyatta operates at Layer 3 wire speed across three Gigabit Ethernet
> ports in full mesh when forwarding 512-byte frames or higher."
>
> 3x1 GE << 1x10 GE

It appears that I put my foot in my mouth.  I have read several claims
that the Vyatta software is scalable to 10G, most notably here:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/031708-vyatta-open-source-router.html.
 Upon further investigation, I have been unable to substantiate that
claim.

My experience is similar to those who have posted here, pps is the
limiting factor - usually somewhere between 500-800K.  Apparently I
was over eager to believe that more had been achieved.

To Ann's question on resources; I have only used Linux routers with 1G
ports but have surpassed 10G total throughput (up+ down) using various
dual proc set ups, most often Intel Xeon in Dell servers.  A gentlemen
by the name of Martin Pels wrote a good paper on the subject early
last year that can be found here:
http://docs.rodecker.nl/10-GE_Routing_on_Linux.pdf.  He hit a wall at
700K pps and was using two dual core Intel Xeon 64bit 2.33GHz CPUs and
2GB of RAM in a Dell PowerEdge 1950.

~Chris

>
> Regards,
> Bill Herrin
>
>
> --
> William D. Herrin  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 3005 Crane Dr. .. Web: 
> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
>

Re: 10GE router resource

[Christopher Morrow]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 1:59 PM, Chris Grundemann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Greg has laid out a great bit of information and I would like to add just
> one possibility to the list of budget 10GE routers: Vyatta.  According to a
> recent press release from that company
> (http://www.vyatta.com/about/pressreleases.php?id=51) they offer a product
> that is "2 to 3X higher performance at a cost savings of more than 75
> percent" when compared to Cisco's 7200.  Unfortunately I have not had the

when did the 7200 go 10ge?

Re: 10GE router resource

[Aaron Glenn]

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 6:15 PM, Patrick Clochesy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Very interesting study I had not seen, and a bummer. That really puts a
> cramp in my advocation of our CARP+pf load balancers/firewalls/gateways.
> Than again, what's a PIX box capable of?

I'd rather tweak a whitebox than pay through the nose for a PIX.

> I also had to switch to OpenBSD as there was a fatal crash with the bridge
> device in FreeBSD when used with my paticular OpenVPN/CARP/pf combination.
>
> AFAIK pf/forwarding only takes place on one core and wouldn't take advantage
> of the other 3 cores, correct?

Correct. There has been some great speed and efficiency improvements
in pf and other networking parts of OpenBSD; though from anecdotal
evidence, 10GbE is not ready for 'primetime' (for certain definitions
of 'primetime').

actually I'll just skip making an ass out of myself and hope henning@
chimes in, since I believe he reads NANOG as well.

aaron.glenn

Re: 10GE router resource

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

Aaron Glenn wrote:

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 6:15 PM, Patrick Clochesy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Very interesting study I had not seen, and a bummer. That really puts a
cramp in my advocation of our CARP+pf load balancers/firewalls/gateways.
Than again, what's a PIX box capable of?


I'd rather tweak a whitebox than pay through the nose for a PIX.

Curious if you or others have tried Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris, they 
claim that they are approaching wire speed 10G with the right card 
(possibly their own, which is about $995 list).


--Patrick

Re: 10GE router resource

[Christopher Morrow]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 1:16 AM, Alex Rubenstein <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>  > How sweet is a sub-$1k router that can do multiple gig-e's at 1.5mpps?
>  > Sounds like a dynamite platform for high-end datacenter CPEs that are
>  > soft
>  > on dynamic routing...and even the open-source dynamic routing is
>  > reasonably solid these days...
>
>  I can't believe I am about to ask this on a public mailing list, but..
>
>  Has anyone tested this in even a remotely production environment, while
>  running any sort of MPLS LDP as a LSR?
>

bahahaah! oh, sorry...

also, how does all-small-packets performance and reasonable ACL
behaviour work? (reasonable for dos things let's keep under 1k acl
lines) What about IDB-type numbers? is this a 10-interfaces at
line-rate or 10k interfaces at line-rate (line-rate on say ... 8 10G
interfaces)?

Scaling a routing platform in software for high bandwidth services is
difficult... or seems to be at least.

-Chris