Re: 10GE router resource

["Chris Grundemann" <cgrundemann () gmail com>]

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 <nanog () grrrrreg net> 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.
--