Anyone Deployed Ascend's GRF IP Switch?

Mon Sep 1 08:48:42 UTC 1997

AGIS had about 40 of them in the last I knew. 

http://www.agis.net/press25.html.

I know from experience that there are some quirks to gated, but as far as
power goes the GRF munches Ciscos.

Ciscos are much easier to work with though.

One big down point on the GRF's imho is that in order to change anything
with them you have to run a gdcreconfig, which stops and starts gated,
effectively taking down the routing for a period of time, whereas you can
add/remove a static route from a cisco and not bring down the routing.

GRF's also take about 5-10 minutes to reboot, which can be annoying.

On the other hand it's quite easy to manage users and such with the GRF's
, as they are BSD based.  Setting up authentication like Radius and
SecurID is quite simple as well.

Then there are the advantages of being able to use tools like nslookup and
whois without having to open a shell somewhere.  Very nice while
troubleshooting.

So, as with any product comparison there are pros and cons to both.  I
think that Cisco's are great, as I'm not a Unix/GateD guru, but I think
that the Ascends have a bit more power to them and will be able to better
handle the growing routing table.

Just my 2 cents.

--Damon

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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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
> 
> 

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Damon Hammis                    Email:  damonh at netrex.com
Network Engineer                URL:    http://www.netrex.com
Netrex, Inc.                    Voice:  248-352-9643
3000 Town Center, Suite 1100    FAX:    248-352-2375
Southfield, MI  48075
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-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Damon Hammis                    Email:  damonh at netrex.com
Network Engineer                URL:    http://www.netrex.com
Netrex, Inc.                    Voice:  248-352-9643
3000 Town Center, Suite 1100    FAX:    248-352-2375
Southfield, MI  48075
------------------------------------------------------------------------
	"Hard work is for people short on talent"