nanog mailing list archives

Re: 10G CPE w/VXLAN - vendors?


From: Yan Filyurin <yanf787 () gmail com>
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2023 17:49:34 -0400

There may be a few more places to go searching.  I am not saying you will
find anything, but worth looking into, assuming Mikrotik won't help. :)

Check out what various SD-WAN vendors have to offer.  Now, SD-WAN has about
46 definitions, as many as vendors (surviving vendors that is), but
underneath all of them, it is some sort of box with a CPU, a semi-smart NIC
with a bunch of ports and routing stack that happens to support L2
transport and can overlay it on top of any WAN transport, including regular
IP underlay that can run on these fiber paths. The one of note is Versa.
Besides BGP and overlaying, you may even get a useful multi-layer control
plane out of it, which under the hood of all marketing definitions is all
the things you are familiar with.   And data plane that can actually do
10G.

Check out some of the Broadcom Qumran half-ru switches.  Something like
that:

https://www.etb-tech.com/dell-networking-s4112f-on-switch-12-x-10gb-sfp-3-x-qsfp28-ports-sw00237.html

There are a few other vendors besides Dell and Dell OS does have your basic
P2P VXLAN and EVPN as VXLAN control plane. There are a few others including
open source options. But you are using these small half-ru Broadcom Qumran
and Trident reference designs.

And finally as you go on that search, you can always build your own.  All
you need is $100-200 mini-pc, Linux on it, some form of optimized forwarder
and open source routing stack.

There are people out there who supposedly did that with Raspberry Pis and
used Linksys routers.  Not that you should do it, but shows that there are
options and don't count on 10G!

Yan



On Wed, Jun 14, 2023 at 4:46 PM Arie Vayner <ariev () vayner net> wrote:

Not sure how much of "CPE" it needs to be, but for example the whole Cisco
Catalyst 9K product line (including the smaller C9300 switches) support the
whole EVPN/VXLAN stack).
A similar set of products exist on the Arista side (e.g. 7xx switches) as
well as Juniper EX4400 products...

On Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 11:53 Adam Thompson <athompson () merlin mb ca> wrote:

Hello, all.

I’m having difficulty finding vendors, never mind products, that fit my
need.



We have a small but growing number of L2 (bridged) customers that have
diverse fiber paths available, and, naturally, want to make use of them.

We have a solution for this: we extend the edge of our EVPN VXLAN fabric
right to the customer premise.  The customer-prem device needs 4x10G SFP+
cages (2 redundant paths, plus LAG to customer), and the switches we
currently use, Arista 7020Rs, are quite expensive if I’m deploying one one
per customer.  (Nice switches, but overkill here – I don’t need 40/100G,
and I don’t need 24 SFP+ ports.  And they still take forever to ship.)



We use RFC7438 §6.3 “vlan-aware-bundle” mode, not §6.1 “vlan-based” mode,
which limits our choices somewhat.  I might be willing to entertain
spinning up a separate VXLAN mesh using RFC7438 §6.1 (“vlan-based”) and
static VTEPs if it saves me a lot of pain.



However, I’m having trouble finding small & cheap*er* 1U (or even
desktop/wallmount) devices that have 4 SFP+ cages, and can do VXLAN, in the
first place.

Who even makes CPE gear with SFP+ ports?  (Other than Mikrotik
CRS309-1G-8S+IN / CRS317-1G-16S+RM, which are nice, but our policy requires
vendor support contracts, so… no-go.)



Vendors?  Model#s, if you happen to know any?



Reply here or privately, whatever floats your boat – any pointers
appreciated!



*Adam Thompson*

Consultant, Infrastructure Services

[image: [MERLIN logo]]

100 - 135 Innovation Drive

Winnipeg, MB R3T 6A8

(204) 977-6824 or 1-800-430-6404 (MB only)

https://www.merlin.mb.ca

Chat with me on Teams
<https://teams.microsoft.com/l/chat/0/0?users=athompson () merlin mb ca>





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