Vyatta as a BRAS

Tue Jul 13 06:56:16 UTC 2010

On 13/07/2010, at 4:50 PM, Dobbins, Roland wrote:

> 
> On Jul 13, 2010, at 1:34 PM, Sharef Mustafa wrote:
> 
>> do you recommend it?
> 
> 
> My comment would be that a software-based BRAS - 7200, Vyatta, et. al. - is no longer viable in today's Internet, and hasn't been for years, due to security/availability concerns.  Same for peering/transit edge, customer aggregation edge, et. al.
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Roland Dobbins <rdobbins at arbor.net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>
> 
>    Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
> 
>                        -- H.L. Mencken

I agree. In a bind I have seen small providers experiment with FreeBSD/Linux L2TP termination (as a LNS), I would recommend against it if you have a business that depends upon these customers' happiness. There were all sorts of issues to address when the customer ran significant traffic forwarding through the unix boxes, namely adjusting kernel parameters for NMB_CLUSTERS, heap sizes, all sorts of sysctl parameters, adding additional interface counts, etc. A low cost 7200 or ERX-310 would easily fit the bill, and you can buy them cheap these days. 

Cheers,
Truman