Re: Force10 E Series at the edge?

[Randy <randy_94108 () yahoo com>]

--- On Tue, 3/27/12, Tom Daly <tom () dyn com> wrote:

> From: Tom Daly <tom () dyn com>
> Subject: Re: Force10 E Series at the edge?
> To: "Brent Roberts" <Brent.Roberts () progressive-solutions com>
> Cc: "NANOG" <nanog () nanog org>
> Date: Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 8:59 PM
> Brent,
> Your options include, for smaller boxes:
>
> - Brocade CER series, but make sure you the -RT versions due
> to RAM (haven't tried, though)
> - Juniper MX (MX80 is working well for us)
> - Cisco ASR1006 (heard a lot about BGP price issues)
>
> But for 300mb/sec, what not OpenBSD + Quagga?
>
> Tom
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> > I was very happy with the E300 as a data center core
> switch handling
> > multiple full feeds (around 15) with about 10x the
> traffic you are
> > talking about.  The only problem I had was that
> Force10 didn't have
> > a useful (basically forklift) upgrade to get more IPv4
> prefixes, and
> > the more I talked to them and the more I showed them
> the graphs
> > demonstrating what we'd need for prefix space assuming
> even the most
> > conservative assumptions at depletion, the more I
> realized they
> > really Did Not Get It.  In fact, their brand new
> architecture
> > recently announced had only 500k prefixes allowed, at a
> time that
> > the Juniper MX platform handled 2million easily.
> >
> > So I would be fine using Force10 again, given the
> following changes:
> >     1. Large limits on IP prefixes
> allowed
> >     2. Reallocation of useless memory
> from stupid things like MAC tables
> >     to prefixes (data centers have very
> few MACs, very many prefixes)
> >     3. Command line logging
> >
> > The units worked great at failover, never had any
> problems gracefully
> > failing over from one RP to another, but if you have to
> cold boot
> > them for any reason it takes like 5 minutes :(
> >
> > On Mar 27, 2012, at 2:21 PM, Roberts, Brent wrote:
> > > Is anyone running an E300 Series Chassis at the
> internet edge with
> > > multiple Full BGP feeds? 95th percent would be
> about 300 meg of
> > > traffic. BGP session count would be between 2 and
> 4 Peers.
> > > 6k internal Prefix count as it stands right now.
> Alternative are
> > > welcome. Thought about the ASR1006 but I need some
> local switching
> > > as well.
> > >
> > > Full requirements include
> > > Full internet Peering over GigE Links.
> > > Fully Redundant Power
> > > Redundant "Supervisor/Route Processor"
> > > Would prefer a Small Chassis unit. (under 10u)
> > > Would also prefer a single unit as opposed to a
> two smaller units.
> > >

I can't speak for forece10 which is DELL now.
As Joe mentioned, the biggest problem is "their-support" of 680k prefixes with the QUAD-CAM linecards. DUAL-CAM line 
cards do 512K in theory. Regular ones don't work because thay support 320K prefifex and "die" around 300K

They have other idiotic-implementations(when to set/NOT set ospf forwarding-address) buggy vrrp implemtation  but I am 
told "it will be fixed in the next release of FTOS.

So, NO! the 300i, 600 or 120 are good a good fit as edge/core layer devices.

On a sepatare note.....their S50 switches; I have found to be "great" as long as your l2 environment doesn't require 
Rapid-PVST.
They do PVST but 802.1W is a single instance.
./Randy