Ascend GRF

Thu Nov 6 16:00:46 UTC 1997

On Thu, 6 Nov 1997 09:44:33 -0600 (CST) 
 Joe Shaw <jshaw at insync.net> wrote:

> Now, we got our GRF 400 from Ascend in the middle of August of this
> year, and It was an impressive piece of equipment.  My first problem with
> it out of the box was the "The GRF for Dummies" instruction manual.  The
> docs on setting up the ATM interface were inaccurate, and after 3 calls to
> their technical support we were able to get the OC-3 ATM interface to
> work. 

Yah the docs do suck a little, fortunetly I manage to figure it out without
phone ascend.

> After that, I had OSPF working on it in under 5 minutes, and was
> seeing routes in the IP table acquired via OSPF, so I was confident.
> Getting BGP configured in any sort of usable state was a different story,
> but after a few days it was set up and working.  After all of this, I was
> losing confidence in it's ability to work reliably.
> 
> After we let it run for a while, we noticed the GateD daemon would just
> die at weird times with no error messages.  So, we tried changing the
> config, 

I don't believe this at all. One good thing about gated is that it has
loads of logging features.

> looking for any sort of misconfiguration, and found none.  We also
> had a problem with the GRF not acctepting all the routes from our
> upstream, but when I tried to use their monitoring utility to see the
> routes, it was missing a key feature;  the pause after it showed one
> screens worth of data.  Nothing like seeing a full routing table flash
> before you, and if you tried to ctrl-c out of it, you killed gated. 

I agree about the pause, but ^c doesn't kill gated it kills gsm.

> It
> was just really frustrating, and we decided to send it back for a Cisco
> 7200.  The GRF has great potential, but the monitoring tools, SNMP daemon,
> and documentation need to be completely redone.

The monitoring tools are not that bad IMO, the page pausing is a pain I agree
but yes the documentation needs more. ESP on gated.

>  Not to mention that
> looking on their web site for technical information or setup help on a
> product is pointless.  Even though it was a brand new product and we were
> supposed to get immediate support on it for the first 30-90 days, it took
> between 2-6 hours to get a call back from Ascend tech support for
> configuration help.  At least with Cisco, if I have a question or a
> problem, I can usually check out their web page or the cd-rom and get the
> answer.
> 

This is true.

> Your network and needs may vary and the GRF may work great in your
> situation.  For mine it did not.

As I know gated well I guess I had an advantage in know gated. I've not
had any problems with it seeing routes via BGP, OSPF is a little buggy
and I think Ascend would do well to put on hold the IS-IS stuff [no doubt
UUnet are pushing for this] and finish getting the other stuff 
finished.

Regards,
Neil.

--
Neil J. McRae. Alive and Kicking.       Domino: In the glow of the night.
neil at DOMINO.ORG        NetBSD/sparc: 100% SpF (Solaris protection Factor) 
  Free the daemon in your <A HREF="http://www.NetBSD.ORG/">computer!</A>