Re: Linux BNG

[Baldur Norddahl <baldur.norddahl () gmail com>]

Den 15/07/2018 kl. 18.00 skrev Raymond Burkholder:
> But I think a clarification on Baldur's speed requirements is needed. 
> He indicates that there are a bunch of locations:  do each of the 
> locations require 10G throughput, or was the throughput defined for 
> all sites in aggregate?  If the sites indivdiually have  smaller 
> throughput, the software based boxes might do, but if that is at each 
> site, then software-only boxes may not handle the throughput.

We have considerably more than 10G of total traffic. We are currently 
transporting it all to one of two locations before doing the BNG 
function. We then have VRRP to enable failover to the other location. 
Transport is by MPLS and L2VPN.

I set the goal post at 10G per server. To handle more traffic we will 
have multiple servers. Load balance does not need to be dynamic. We 
would just distribute the customers so each customer is always handled 
by the same server. 10G per server translates to approximately 5000 
customers per server (2018 - this number is expected to drop as time goes).

I am wondering if we could make an open source system (does not strictly 
have to be Linux) that could do the BNG function at 10G per server, with 
a server in the price range of 1k - 2k USD. For many sizes of ISP this 
would be far far cheaper than any of the solutions from Cisco, Juniper 
et al. Even if you had to get 10 servers to handle 100G you would likely 
still come out ahead of the big iron solution. And for a startup (like 
us) it is great to be able to start out with little investment and then 
let the solution grow with the business.

Regards,

Baldur