RE: Foundry BigIron series

["Joel Perez" <jperez () numind net>]

Hey Will,

I do not have experience using any Foundry boxes.
I do however use Riverstone extensively; my whole network is composed of
RS boxes ranging from RS3000's up to RS8600's.
I have an RS8600 handling my core routing right now! Im taking full bgp
tables from 3 upstreams and several gig and ds-3 links for my OSPF
backbone.
I used to have a 7206VXR trying to do the same.

The cli is in my opinion easier than Cisco's IOS to learn. It has plenty
of neat features that make it very user friendly. 

The only issue I have had is with the way it handles flows. I used to
hit 100% cpu utilization when my traffic peaked due to the way the flows
were handled. However, the problem was sort of fixed by enabling
Riverstone's version of Cisco's CFE and move the flows to the ASIC's in
the linecards. 
Just as an example during my peak usage I move between 300-350Megs of
traffic and my cpu barely goes above 10% utilization.

The draw back is that I can not use ACL's as effectively in my core, so
I moved all my ACL's to my edge routers! 

Oh, and they are a fraction of the cost of the other big name brands.


If you want any more info you are more than welcome to ask.

Regards,
----------------------------------------------
Joel Perez <jperez () ntera net>  | IP Engineer
http://www.ntera.net/                 | Ntera
305.914.3412

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Will Yardley [mailto:william+nanog () hq dreamhost com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2003 2:55 PM
> > To: nanog () merit edu
> > Subject: Foundry BigIron series
> >
> >
> > We're considering switching to Foundry BigIrons (probably the 4000, as
> > opposed to Cisco 6500 series switches. We're currently using
7206VXRs).
> > Anyone have opinions (on or off list) on this product? Looking through
> > the archives, I don't notice any discussions of this since about 2001
[1].
> > (http://www.foundrynet.com/products/l3backbone/bigiron/BigIronx00Datas
heet
> > .html)
> >
> > I'm mostly interested in its BGP implementation, as the boxes would be
> > handling our core routing via BGP.
> > (I haven't noticed anyone complaining about BGP problems in the past
> > year or so); also opinions on the CLI would be helpful (I'm told it's
> > 95% identical to IOS's CLI). The CLI was another complaint in the
thread
> > cited below, so I'm curious if it has improved since 2001.
> >
> > I'd be interested in hearing about the comparable Riverstone boxes as
> > well.
> >
> > [1] thread starting at
> > http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/2002-09/msg00050.html
> >
> > --
> > "Since when is skepticism un-American?
> > Dissent's not treason but they talk like it's the same..."
> > (Sleater-Kinney - "Combat Rock")