[131257] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Recommendations for Metro-Ethernet Equipment
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ramanpreet Singh)
Thu Oct 21 18:05:24 2010
In-Reply-To: <042e01cb7152$f285e7f0$d791b7d0$@net>
Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:05:16 -0700
From: Ramanpreet Singh <sikandar.raman@gmail.com>
To: Eric Merkel <merkel@metalink.net>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
I used Extreme 6808 and 6816 in the core and Summit 24's at the
edge/telemetry . The hardware was real flaky. We had lot of issues
with the Line cards. Lot of H?w replacements. Make sure if they can
provide you some statistics of RMA's.
To be fair, Our hardware was EOL, I am not sure if they have improved
but then we migrated all our equiment in 2008-2009.
-Raman
On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:05 PM, Eric Merkel <merkel@metalink.net> wrote:
> Thanks to everyone who responded. Just got done talking with Extreme whic=
h
> no one really mentioned. Seems like decent gear reasonably priced. Anyone
> care to comment on them specifically or have them used them a metro Ether=
net
> build?
>
>
> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
> Eric Merkel
> MetaLINK Technologies, Inc.
> Email: merkel at metalink.net
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Armstrong [mailto:dan@beanfield.com]
> Sent: 2010-10-20 19:50
> To: Ramanpreet Singh
> Cc: Jason Lixfeld; nanog@nanog.org
> Subject: Re: Recommendations for Metro-Ethernet Equipment
>
> I think that's what Jason just said. :-)
>
>
>
>
> On 2010-10-20, at 5:24 PM, Ramanpreet Singh wrote:
>
>> 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
> decent PE for almost two years. =A0Our requirements were for a PE device =
that
> had between 12-24 ports (in a perfect world, mixed mode 10/100/1000 coppe=
r +
> SFP), 10G uplinks, EoMPLS, MPLS VPN, DHCP server, port-protect/UNI (or
> similar) capabilities, DC power and a small footprint (1RU)
>>>
>>> Of all the ones we looked at (Juniper, Cisco, Extreme, Brocade, MRV,
> Alcatel) initially, MRV was the only contender. =A0The rest either didn't=
have
> a product, or their offering didn't meet various points within our criter=
ia.
>>>
>>> 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,
> mixed-mode ports, promised a 10G uplink product soon, size was perfect,
> power was perfect, we thought we had it nailed. =A0Unfortunately there ar=
e no
> words to describe how terrible the software was. =A0The CLI took a little
> getting used to, which is pretty much par for the course when you're deal=
ing
> with a new vendor, but the code itself was just absolutely broken,
> everywhere. =A0Duplex issues, LDP constantly crashing taking the box with=
it,
> OSPF issues, the list went on and on. =A0To their credit, they flew engin=
eers
> up from the US and they were quite committed to making stuff work, but at
> the end 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 they'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. =A0=
As
> such, we had a few of these loaned to our lab for a few months to put
> through 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
> jargon 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 c=
reate
> the LSPs as well. =A0To get a ccc working, the JunOS code block was far l=
arger
> and much more involved per vc than the single line Cisco equivalent. =A0T=
o
> create the LSPs was, I believe, two more equally large sized code blocks.
> At 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
> pitched 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 ME36=
00
> 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 perf=
ect,
> but our gripes have more to do with form factor (it's 1RU, but it's a bit
> 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 =
and
> performance, but this hasn't seen any real world action, so who knows how
> that will turn out.
>>>
>>> If you're asking more about a P router or P/PE hybrid, we've also just
> ordered a few ASR9000s under try-and-buy as P/PEs to close up the chains =
of
> ME3600s 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 w=
ell
> 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.
>>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
