nanog mailing list archives
Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions
From: "Paul Wall" <pauldotwall () gmail com>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:26:05 -0400
On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 7:26 PM, Jo Rhett <jrhett () netconsonance com> wrote:
1) ReliabilityVery good. Across our entire business we've lost 1 RPM module in ~2 years.
How many boxes in total? Losing a single routing engine in two years is not a bad MTBF, though I wonder if we're talking about one chassis or one thousand.
2) Performance[Note: we have no 10g interfaces, so I can only speak to a many-singleg-port environment] Much higher than Cisco. So good at dealing with traffic problems that we have had multi-gig DoS attacks that we wouldn't have known about without having an IDS running on a mirroring port.
Routing n*GE at line rate isn't difficult these days, even with all 64-byte packets and other "DoS" conditions. Linksys, D-Link, SMC, etc are able to pull it off on the layer 3 switches sold at Fry's for a couple benjamins a pop. :) Now mind you, this is all traffic through the router. I'd imagine Force 10 would have a problem with traffic aimed at its interface or loopback IPs, given their lack of control plane policing/filtering, unlike say: http://aharp.ittns.northwestern.edu/papers/copp.html
3) Support staff (how knowledgeable are they?)Significantly higher than Cisco, and escalation is easier. On par with Juniper.
This is good, though not necessarily hard when you have a small pool of TAC people. Then again, I've always had a good support experience with Extreme, but I'm not about to run out and replace my core with Black Diamonds. :)
These things are so very solid that I rarely spend any time doing network work any more. Gigabit line-speed BCP38 makes life easier for the abuse helpdesk too.
I'm unaware of any hardware-forwarding-based platforms which can't do this. Though if I find any, I'll be sure to steer clear! Paul Wall
Current thread:
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions, (continued)
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions Jared Mauch (Aug 22)
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions Paul Wall (Aug 23)
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions Jo Rhett (Aug 25)
- RE: Force10 Gear - Opinions James Jun (Aug 25)
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions Paul Wall (Aug 26)
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions Stephen Sprunk (Aug 26)
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions Owen DeLong (Aug 26)
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions Greg VILLAIN (Aug 31)
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions Jo Rhett (Aug 25)
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions Jo Rhett (Aug 25)
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions Rubens Kuhl Jr. (Aug 25)
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions Paul Wall (Aug 26)
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions Chris Riling (Aug 26)
- Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions Mikael Abrahamsson (Aug 26)