Anyone Deployed Ascend's GRF IP Switch?

Mon Aug 25 16:05:48 UTC 1997

Well they are out as we (ACC) have deployed them and the have worked well so far.  We have had a couple of bug to date and Ascend has addressed them quickly.  As for them being new they have been around for two years but I do agree that they need some polishing on the router management side.

Rgds

cjm

-----Original Message-----
From:	Brian Horvitz [SMTP:horvitz at mediaone.net]
Sent:	Saturday, August 23, 1997 1:06 AM
To:	Lane Patterson; Christofer Hoff
Cc:	nanog at merit.edu
Subject:	Re: Anyone Deployed Ascend's GRF IP Switch?

 Why, you know where to get one?  And even if they were out, I'm not sure
I'm want to deploy anything in a 60 node network pushing that much data
which was so new.

Brian

>Talk to Nathan Stratton at Netrail.  He's our collective test case :-)
>
>Aren't you looking at Cisco's BFR too?
>
>-Lane
>
>On Fri, 22 Aug 1997, Christofer Hoff wrote:
>
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>> We are in the development phase of engineering the deployment of
>> approximately
>> 60 POPs throughout the US.  Our 'standard' configuration is normally
>> based upon
>> cisco equipment and more often than not consists of a 7513 connected
>> to a Catalyst
>> 5000/5500 via FDDI with the various internal LAN segments switched
>> from there via FD 100BaseTX.
>>
>> We've begun to explore the viability of deploying the GRF for several
>> reasons,
>> not the least of which is cost and performance.  Given (and taken
>> with a grain
>> of salt) the apparent performance differential between the cisco 7513
>> and the
>> Ascend GRF (the GRF outperforms the 7513 substantially in our tests,)
>> my
>> concerns are more operations-related.
>>
>> The GRF DOES support the 'full' implementation (including extensions)
>> of
>> BGP4 and the other 'vanilla' TCP services that you'd come to expect
>> from
>> a router (er, layer 3 switch?) of this caliber.  Since it's NOT a
>> cisco,
>> we'd have to deviate and not utilize EIGRP as our IGP of choice, and
>> deploy
>> OSPF which poses its own set of issues.
>>
>> SO, the bottom line...has anyone else deployed multiple GRF400's with
>> success.
>> Ascend will tell you that UUNET has deployed (or is going to) a
>> hundred or so.
>> I want to talk to people USING the technology, not thinking about it.
>>
>> Your comments and opinions are welcomed.
>>
>> TIA,
>>
>> Christofer Hoff
>>
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>>             ,,,
>>            (o-o)
>> ------.oOO--(_)--OOo.---------------------------------
>> Christofer L. Hoff            \  No true genius is
>> Chief Nerd,                    \  possible without a
>> NodeWarrior Networks, Inc       \  little intelligent
>>                                  \  madness!
>> hoff at nodewarrior.net              \
>> http://www.nodewarrior.net         \ -Peter Uberoth
>> "Nuthin' but Net!"                  \
>> ------------------------------------------------------
>>        310.568.1700 vox - 310.568.4766 fax
>>
>>
>
>