Recommendations for Metro-Ethernet Equipment

Bill Blackford bblackford at gmail.com
Fri Oct 22 01:47:56 UTC 2010


Unrelated, but...

I use Extreme Summit in low-touch, user access areas because of it's
low cost and stacking capability as compared to J and C. I figure you
get what you pay for. The interface stats, ease of functionality for
some of the features I frequent, are seriously lacking. I've been told
that I could write a script to get close to the same functionality
that I get by default with my other two vendor choices, but I find
that unacceptable. I experienced that the LLDP-MED seems to require a
"re-config" occasionally to work consistently, so,....... this vendor
would not be my first choice to venture into a new technology. Others
posters [YMMV].

Now, the Extreme cost/benefit, small form factor and features such as
their proprietary ring protocol (similar to Cisco REP),  may make them
a contender for MEF applications. I can't say. For high-touch, high
visibility purposes, I'm making other choices.

-b

-- 
Bill Blackford
Network Engineer

Logged into reality and abusing my sudo privileges.....

an their purple color
> and that I don't really know their IOS that well. But to be fair, they have worked just fine.....
>
> In the future I hope we can migrate over to cisco switches because I'm bias..... =)
>
>
>
>> From: merkel at metalink.net
>> To: nanog at nanog.org
>> Subject: RE: Recommendations for Metro-Ethernet Equipment
>> Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:05:37 -0400
>>
>> Thanks to everyone who responded. Just got done talking with Extreme which
>> no one really mentioned. Seems like decent gear reasonably priced. Anyone
>> care to comment on them specifically or have them used them a metro Ethernet
>> build?
>>
>>
>> =====
>> Eric Merkel
>> MetaLINK Technologies, Inc.
>> Email: merkel at metalink.net
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Dan Armstrong [mailto:dan at beanfield.com]
>> Sent: 2010-10-20 19:50
>> To: Ramanpreet Singh
>> Cc: Jason Lixfeld; nanog at nanog.org
>> Subject: Re: Recommendations for Metro-Ethernet Equipment
>>
>> I think that's what Jason just said. :-)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2010-10-20, at 5:24 PM, Ramanpreet Singh wrote:
>>
>> > 7600's/ASR 1k
>> >
>> > Have you looked in to Ciso ME 3600X/ME 3800X series?
>> >
>> > Without a bias these are the top notch products in the market for Metro E.
>> >
>> > -Raman
>> >
>> > On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 12:57 PM, Jason Lixfeld <jason at lixfeld.ca> wrote:
>> >> On 2010-10-20, at 11:24 AM, Eric Merkel wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> Any suggestions, success or horror stories are appreciated. ;)
>> >>
>> >> I've been going through pretty much the same exercise looking for a
>> decent PE for almost two years.  Our requirements were for a PE device that
>> had between 12-24 ports (in a perfect world, mixed mode 10/100/1000 copper +
>> SFP), 10G uplinks, EoMPLS, MPLS VPN, DHCP server, port-protect/UNI (or
>> similar) capabilities, DC power and a small footprint (1RU)
>> >>
>> >> Of all the ones we looked at (Juniper, Cisco, Extreme, Brocade, MRV,
>> Alcatel) initially, MRV was the only contender.  The rest either didn't have
>> a product, or their offering didn't meet various points within our criteria.
>> >>
>> >> As such, we bought a bunch of MRVs in early 2009 and after four months of
>> trial and error, we yanked every single one out of the network.  From a
>> physical perspective, the box was perfect.  Port density was perfect,
>> mixed-mode ports, promised a 10G uplink product soon, size was perfect,
>> power was perfect, we thought we had it nailed.  Unfortunately there are no
>> words to describe how terrible the software was.  The CLI took a little
>> getting used to, which is pretty much par for the course when you're dealing
>> with a new vendor, but the code itself was just absolutely broken,
>> everywhere.  Duplex issues, LDP constantly crashing taking the box with it,
>> OSPF issues, the list went on and on.  To their credit, they flew engineers
>> up from the US and they were quite committed to making stuff work, but at
>> the end of the day, they just couldn't make it go.  We pulled the plug in
>> May 2009 and I haven't heard a thing about their product since then, so
>> maybe they've got it all together.
>> >>
>> >> While meeting with Juniper a few months later about a different project,
>> they said they had a product that might fit our needs.  The EX4200.  As
>> such, we had a few of these loaned to our lab for a few months to put
>> through their paces, from a features and interoperability perspective.  They
>> work[1] and they seem to work well.  The show stopper was provisioning[1]
>> and size.  The box is massive, albeit it is still 1U.
>> >>
>> >> [1] (I'm not a Juniper guy, so my recollection on specific terms and
>> jargon may be a bit off kilter) they only support ccc, which makes
>> provisioning an absolute nightmare.  From my experience with Cisco and MRV,
>> you only have to configure the EoMPLS vc.  On the EX4200, you have to create
>> the LSPs as well.  To get a ccc working, the JunOS code block was far larger
>> and much more involved per vc than the single line Cisco equivalent.  To
>> create the LSPs was, I believe, two more equally large sized code blocks.
>> At the end of the day, it was just too involved.  We needed something
>> simpler.
>> >>
>> >> About the same time that we started to evaluate the EX4200, Cisco had
>> pitched us on their (then alpha) Whales platform.  It looked promising (MRV
>> still had the best form factor) and we expressed our interest in getting a
>> beta unit in as soon as we were able to.  This is now known as the ME3600
>> and ME3800 platform and we've been testing a beta unit in our lab for the
>> past few months.  This is the platform we have chosen.  It's not perfect,
>> but our gripes have more to do with form factor (it's 1RU, but it's a bit
>> deeper than what we'd like) and port densities (no mixed mode ports) than
>> software or features.  We've been pretty pleased with it's feature set and
>> performance, but this hasn't seen any real world action, so who knows how
>> that will turn out.
>> >>
>> >> If you're asking more about a P router or P/PE hybrid, we've also just
>> ordered a few ASR9000s under try-and-buy as P/PEs to close up the chains of
>> ME3600s that will start to be deployed in our remote sites.  A Juniper MX
>> would certainly work well here too, and it seems to interoperate rather well
>> with the ME3600s, so that's certainly an option, but for us, we think it
>> will work more in our favor to go with the ASRs in the core, but if not,
>> we'd ship them back under the try-and-buy and get Junipers instead.
>> >>
>> >> Hope that helps.
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>



-- 
Bill Blackford
Network Engineer

Logged into reality and abusing my sudo privileges.....




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