Re: Anyone Deployed Ascend's GRF IP Switch?

[Nathan Stratton <nathan () netrail net>]

On Sat, 23 Aug 1997, Brian Horvitz wrote:

>  Why, you know where to get one?  And even if they were out, I'm not sure
> I'm want to deploy anything in a 60 node network pushing that much data
> which was so new.
>
> Brian

Why not? The we have over 17 GRF in our network. The bax had a few major
problems, but Ascend has worked most of them out. 

Nathan Stratton                             President, CTO, NetRail,Inc.
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> > Talk to Nathan Stratton at Netrail.  He's our collective test case :-)
> >
> > Aren't you looking at Cisco's BFR too?
> >
> > -Lane
> >
> > On Fri, 22 Aug 1997, Christofer Hoff wrote:
> >
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> > >
> > > We are in the development phase of engineering the deployment of
> > > approximately
> > > 60 POPs throughout the US.  Our 'standard' configuration is normally
> > > based upon
> > > cisco equipment and more often than not consists of a 7513 connected
> > > to a Catalyst
> > > 5000/5500 via FDDI with the various internal LAN segments switched
> > > from there via FD 100BaseTX.
> > >
> > > We've begun to explore the viability of deploying the GRF for several
> > > reasons,
> > > not the least of which is cost and performance.  Given (and taken
> > > with a grain
> > > of salt) the apparent performance differential between the cisco 7513
> > > and the
> > > Ascend GRF (the GRF outperforms the 7513 substantially in our tests,)
> > > my
> > > concerns are more operations-related.
> > >
> > > The GRF DOES support the 'full' implementation (including extensions)
> > > of
> > > BGP4 and the other 'vanilla' TCP services that you'd come to expect
> > > from
> > > a router (er, layer 3 switch?) of this caliber.  Since it's NOT a
> > > cisco,
> > > we'd have to deviate and not utilize EIGRP as our IGP of choice, and
> > > deploy
> > > OSPF which poses its own set of issues.
> > >
> > > SO, the bottom line...has anyone else deployed multiple GRF400's with
> > > success.
> > > Ascend will tell you that UUNET has deployed (or is going to) a
> > > hundred or so.
> > > I want to talk to people USING the technology, not thinking about it.
> > >
> > > Your comments and opinions are welcomed.
> > >
> > > TIA,
> > >
> > > Christofer Hoff
> > >
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> > > iQA/AwUBM/3KcnRoVZYHVpX1EQKKwgCgsnu30mTvCXZRyH68TOWeq3z0uZkAnj0F
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> > >
> > >             ,,,
> > >            (o-o)
> > > ------.oOO--(_)--OOo.---------------------------------
> > > Christofer L. Hoff            \  No true genius is
> > > Chief Nerd,                    \  possible without a
> > > NodeWarrior Networks, Inc       \  little intelligent
> > >                                  \  madness!
> > > hoff () nodewarrior net              \
> > > http://www.nodewarrior.net         \ -Peter Uberoth
> > > "Nuthin' but Net!"                  \
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> > >        310.568.1700 vox - 310.568.4766 fax