[63901] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Extreme BlackDiamond
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mikael Abrahamsson)
Sun Oct 12 23:19:57 2003
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 05:19:19 +0200 (CEST)
From: Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike@swm.pp.se>
To: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <20031013011559.3C85D5DD8E@segue.merit.edu>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, Shazad - eServers wrote:
> How are these for CORE SWITCHES (distribution) compared to BigIron and the
> CISCO 6509?
> >From what I have heard and reports they are very solid switches.
Some things to know about them:
They use CPU to route ICMP just like all Extreme equipment (makes it
harder to diagnose network trouble using ICMP).
They have a 256k entry ipfdb (fastpath hardware L3 hostbased route-cache).
They're very quick and stable when it comes to forwarding traffic that has
a normal pattern, but they do not perform well when it comes to handling
stuff like DoS attacks that generates packets that are not in its ipfdb.
The last months virus attacks have not been fun to us (both the ICMP and
the scanning from infected customers and our aggregates being scanned from
infected internet hosts).
They do everything in hardware when it comes to access lists, QoS etc.
Either it does it in ASIC without performance impact or not at all.
Just like all other equipment you'd better look it thru thoroughly for
your application and check what drawbacks might hit you etc. I don't know
much about the BigIron. but it's hard to compare to a 6509 unless you know
what's in the 6509. Compare it to a Sup1A with older cards and the Black
Diamond is a performance screamer that'll do circles around the 6509,
bring out the OSMs and all the other 7600 stuff and that's a better core
router probably (but much much more expensive).
I like the fact that all Extreme equipment of the same generation (they
have two total) use the same ASICs and the same software and you can do
the same things in all of them. Very consistant.
--
Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se
