[4729] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Advice on dealing with Sprint
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher Caldwell)
Thu Sep 26 16:59:37 1996
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 1996 16:25:33 -0400
To: "Chris A. Icide" <chris@nap.net>
From: cdc@GroupZ.net (Christopher Caldwell)
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
I called Sprint. They said to multihome, load balance across to distinct
backbones (i.e Sprint & UUNET), and accept the full routing table, I'd have
to use a 7000 series.
I didn't believe them, so I logged a call with the TAC. They said they knew
of no technical reason why the 4500 wouldn't do the trick, but maybe I
should call my sales engineer.
My sales engineer said the 4500 would to the trick (of course they'd prefer
to sell me a 7000), but I might have to accept reduced routes or perform
some other kludge to reduce the load on the router; and no telling what the
performance would be like 2 months from now.
Note: Our primary interest is bypassing problems we're experiencing between
Sprint and UUNET via MAE-E, but we'd like to offer the best connectivity to
our web servers.
I called Sprint back, and they said they could work out a 'Special Customer
Arrangement' to deal with the 4500.
Based on the e-mail addresses I see on this group, it seems like we should
be able to come to some consensus about the
viability/sensibility/performance related issues related to this topology.
>
> I'm extremely suprised that this is their stance. I'm pressed to find a
>technical reason behind such a requirement. The 7000 is a Motorola 68XXX
>based system, and the 4500/4700 is a risc based system. There have been
>performance tests that have shown that the 45/47 boxes out perform the
>7000 boxes. I'd be very interested in hearing Sprints' reasoning on this.
>
>
