Force10 E300 vs. Juniper MX480

Fri Jul 18 03:09:54 UTC 2008

Hi all,

An acquaintance who runs an ISP with an M7i on its border is looking  
to upgrade, because the M7i is starting to creak from all the flesh- 
tone MPEGs his customers are sharing. (How times have changed. Back  
when I was chasing packets, it was flesh-tone JPEGs.)

He's looking at the MX480 and the E300.

The MX480 is attractive because the M7i has been stable as a rock, and  
he's familiar with JUNOS.

The E300 is attractive because it's half the price of the MX480, and  
has the potential to hold layer-2 cards as well as layer-3 ports which  
makes the price per port much more reasonable than the MX480. But he  
has no experience with Force10 at any ISO layer higher than 2.

He doesn't have any exotic requirements beyond OSPF, OSPFv3, BGP, IP  
and IPv6. There's no MPLS in the picture, for example. However, he's  
going to want four or five full tables plus a moderate load of peering  
routes in there. And maybe VRRP.

Thoughts from people who have tried one or the other, or both? Or who  
have faced this kind of problem, and came up with a different answer?

Feel free to send mail off-list; I can summarise if there is interest.

Joe