Brocade MLX Feedback

Thu Jan 15 08:40:28 UTC 2015

Hi,

I've been running NetIron (MLXe + CER-RT) for quite some time, mostly happy
with the products.

Of course, there are always some unforseen / silly / nasty things that
still turn one's mind upside down. What we noticed so far :

    - ISSU / hitless protocols upgrades : we have been pounding them to get
it right, an RFE has been submitted for quite some time now but it's not
there yet,

    - Support of route reflection for VPLS auto discovery : same as above,

    - Adding packet capture (PCAP) capabilities : newly submitted RFE,

    - Adding BGP flowspec support : same as above,

Also, BFD is always a little sensitive when the routers' CPU spike even if
it's supported in hardware.

All in all, and from a price/performance perspective, I would still
recommend them if they match your business case (especially CER-RT for
small colo / IP transit / IXP PEs and/or BGP route reflection).

HTH.

2015-01-14 21:17 GMT+01:00 Jeff Sorrels <jlsorrels at kanren.net>:

> Graham,
>
> We have several Brocades - including XMR, CER, and CES devices. Their
> convergence is excellent, even with several full v4 and v6 tables, and was
> much faster than other platforms (I'm looking at you MXs...).   In terms of
> TCAM and convergence, best bang for the buck as they say.
>
> One 'gotcha' we discovered: Brocade does not have, as per our last
> discussion with them, BGP FlowSpec on the road map.  That was a problem for
> us, but YMMV.
>
> Cheers,
> Jeff
>
>
>
>
> On 1/14/2015 1:10 PM, Graham Johnston wrote:
>
>> We are looking at Brocade MLX routers to act as Internet edge routers.
>> They will initially handle two to four full tables, plus peering on an IX.
>> The price is certainly attractive.  We are coming from Cisco 7600 series
>> devices.  Can anyone comment about their use of them?  Are you happy with
>> them?  Any gotchas?  Particularly we are interested in convergence time to
>> full FIB population.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Graham Johnston
>> Network Planner
>> Westman Communications Group
>> 204.717.2829
>> johnstong at westmancom.com<mailto:johnstong at westmancom.com>
>> P think green; don't print this email.
>>
>>
> --
> Jeff Sorrels
> Network Administrator
> KanREN, Inc
> jlsorrels at kanren.net
> 785-856-9820, #2
>
>

-- 
Youssef BENGELLOUN-ZAHR