opinions on routers/switches for parallel clusters

Mon Jun 18 16:54:01 UTC 2001

Having dealt with Lucent I can warn you away from them (as if I need to 
nowadays). Having dealt with Cabletron I can warn you away from Riverstone. 
The only company you mention which has consistently provided excellent 
products and support (and never screwed me around or lied to me) is Cisco. 
Their stuff is a bit overpriced, but <cliche> you get what you pay for. 
</cliche>

At 11:15 AM 6/18/01 -0500, keichii at freebsd.org wrote:

>Hi Everyone,
>
>We are an educational institution looking into building
>a scientific computing cluster that has 128-256 nodes
>interconnected by gigE.  The outward connection would
>be the site FDDI ring.
>
>The problem is that we want to experiment with the topology
>as well as the computing part. :)  And I am at a loss
>as to what gigE switch and router we should use.
>
>The requirements are:
>1. ability to morph the topology at will
>2. fast (doh!)
>3. Layer 1-4 is required (up to layer 7 would be nice)
>4. load balancing
>
>Which companies' products do you like? (*Barring* Cisco)
>[If you cannot state your opinion publicly, please send me a
>private reply.  I appreciate it and will keep it confidential.)
>
>I am looking at these companies:
>Lucent
>Foundey Networks
>River Stone
>Alteon
>Extreme Networks
>Ericcson
>
>Would the people who have had experience with these products
>tell me what they feel?  Thank you very much.
>
>Michael
>--
>+-----------------------------------------------------------+
>| keichii at iteration.net         | keichii at freebsd.org       |
>| http://iteration.net/~keichii | Yes, BSD is a conspiracy. |
>+-----------------------------------------------------------+