[131120] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Recommendations for Metro-Ethernet Equipment
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ramanpreet Singh)
Wed Oct 20 17:24:38 2010
In-Reply-To: <E161B85D-DBA0-4F85-B849-328ABB8E3E91@lixfeld.ca>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:24:31 -0700
From: Ramanpreet Singh <sikandar.raman@gmail.com>
To: Jason Lixfeld <jason@lixfeld.ca>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
7600's/ASR 1k
Have you looked in to Ciso ME 3600X/ME 3800X series?
Without a bias these are the top notch products in the market for Metro E.
-Raman
On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:57 PM, Jason Lixfeld <jason@lixfeld.ca> wrote:
> On 2010-10-20, at 11:24 AM, Eric Merkel wrote:
>
>> Any suggestions, success or horror stories are appreciated. ;)
>
> I've been going through pretty much the same exercise looking for a decen=
t PE for almost two years. =A0Our requirements were for a PE device that ha=
d between 12-24 ports (in a perfect world, mixed mode 10/100/1000 copper + =
SFP), 10G uplinks, EoMPLS, MPLS VPN, DHCP server, port-protect/UNI (or simi=
lar) capabilities, DC power and a small footprint (1RU)
>
> Of all the ones we looked at (Juniper, Cisco, Extreme, Brocade, MRV, Alca=
tel) initially, MRV was the only contender. =A0The rest either didn't have =
a product, or their offering didn't meet various points within our criteria=
.
>
> As such, we bought a bunch of MRVs in early 2009 and after four months of=
trial and error, we yanked every single one out of the network. =A0From a =
physical perspective, the box was perfect. =A0Port density was perfect, mix=
ed-mode ports, promised a 10G uplink product soon, size was perfect, power =
was perfect, we thought we had it nailed. =A0Unfortunately there are no wor=
ds to describe how terrible the software was. =A0The CLI took a little gett=
ing used to, which is pretty much par for the course when you're dealing wi=
th a new vendor, but the code itself was just absolutely broken, everywhere=
. =A0Duplex issues, LDP constantly crashing taking the box with it, OSPF is=
sues, the list went on and on. =A0To their credit, they flew engineers up f=
rom the US and they were quite committed to making stuff work, but at the e=
nd of the day, they just couldn't make it go. =A0We pulled the plug in May =
2009 and I haven't heard a thing about their product since then, so maybe t=
hey've got it all together.
>
> While meeting with Juniper a few months later about a different project, =
they said they had a product that might fit our needs. =A0The EX4200. =A0As=
such, we had a few of these loaned to our lab for a few months to put thro=
ugh their paces, from a features and interoperability perspective. =A0They =
work[1] and they seem to work well. =A0The show stopper was provisioning[1]=
and size. =A0The box is massive, albeit it is still 1U.
>
> [1] (I'm not a Juniper guy, so my recollection on specific terms and jarg=
on may be a bit off kilter) they only support ccc, which makes provisioning=
an absolute nightmare. =A0From my experience with Cisco and MRV, you only =
have to configure the EoMPLS vc. =A0On the EX4200, you have to create the L=
SPs as well. =A0To get a ccc working, the JunOS code block was far larger a=
nd much more involved per vc than the single line Cisco equivalent. =A0To c=
reate the LSPs was, I believe, two more equally large sized code blocks. =
=A0At the end of the day, it was just too involved. =A0We needed something =
simpler.
>
> About the same time that we started to evaluate the EX4200, Cisco had pit=
ched us on their (then alpha) Whales platform. =A0It looked promising (MRV =
still had the best form factor) and we expressed our interest in getting a =
beta unit in as soon as we were able to. =A0This is now known as the ME3600=
and ME3800 platform and we've been testing a beta unit in our lab for the =
past few months. =A0This is the platform we have chosen. =A0It's not perfec=
t, but our gripes have more to do with form factor (it's 1RU, but it's a bi=
t deeper than what we'd like) and port densities (no mixed mode ports) than=
software or features. =A0We've been pretty pleased with it's feature set a=
nd performance, but this hasn't seen any real world action, so who knows ho=
w that will turn out.
>
> If you're asking more about a P router or P/PE hybrid, we've also just or=
dered a few ASR9000s under try-and-buy as P/PEs to close up the chains of M=
E3600s that will start to be deployed in our remote sites. =A0A Juniper MX =
would certainly work well here too, and it seems to interoperate rather wel=
l with the ME3600s, so that's certainly an option, but for us, we think it =
will work more in our favor to go with the ASRs in the core, but if not, we=
'd ship them back under the try-and-buy and get Junipers instead.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
