Recommendations for Metro-Ethernet Equipment

Thu Oct 21 23:44:01 UTC 2010

We use quite a bit of extreme switches. I personally don't have anything against them other than their purple color
and that I don't really know their IOS that well. But to be fair, they have worked just fine.....

In the future I hope we can migrate over to cisco switches because I'm bias..... =)

> From: merkel at metalink.net
> To: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: RE: Recommendations for Metro-Ethernet Equipment
> Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:05:37 -0400
> 
> Thanks to everyone who responded. Just got done talking with Extreme which
> no one really mentioned. Seems like decent gear reasonably priced. Anyone
> care to comment on them specifically or have them used them a metro Ethernet
> build? 
> 
> 
> =====
> Eric Merkel
> MetaLINK Technologies, Inc.
> Email: merkel at metalink.net
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Armstrong [mailto:dan at beanfield.com] 
> Sent: 2010-10-20 19:50
> To: Ramanpreet Singh
> Cc: Jason Lixfeld; nanog at 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 at 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.  Our requirements were for a PE device that
> had 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
> 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.  The 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.  From a
> physical perspective, the box was perfect.  Port density was perfect,
> mixed-mode ports, promised a 10G uplink product soon, size was perfect,
> power was perfect, we thought we had it nailed.  Unfortunately there are no
> words to describe how terrible the software was.  The CLI took a little
> getting used to, which is pretty much par for the course when you're dealing
> with a new vendor, but the code itself was just absolutely broken,
> everywhere.  Duplex issues, LDP constantly crashing taking the box with it,
> OSPF issues, the list went on and on.  To their credit, they flew engineers
> 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.  We 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.  The EX4200.  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.  They
> work[1] and they seem to work well.  The show stopper was provisioning[1]
> and size.  The 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.  From my experience with Cisco and MRV,
> you only have to configure the EoMPLS vc.  On the EX4200, you have to create
> the LSPs as well.  To get a ccc working, the JunOS code block was far larger
> and much more involved per vc than the single line Cisco equivalent.  To
> create the LSPs was, I believe, two more equally large sized code blocks.
> At the end of the day, it was just too involved.  We needed something
> simpler.
> >> 
> >> About the same time that we started to evaluate the EX4200, Cisco had
> pitched us on their (then alpha) Whales platform.  It 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.  This 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.  This is the platform we have chosen.  It's not perfect,
> 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.  We'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.  A Juniper MX
> would certainly work well here too, and it seems to interoperate rather well
> 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.
> >> 
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 