few big monolithic PEs vs many small PEs

Fri Jun 21 12:12:19 UTC 2019

On 21/Jun/19 10:46, adamv0025 at netconsultings.com wrote:

> I'd actually like to hear more on that if you don't mind.

What part, Juniper's Ethernet switching portfolio?

> You actually haven't answered the question I'm afraid :)
> So would you connect the Juniper now Arista aggregation switch to at least two PEs in the POP (or all PEs in the POP -"fabric-style") or would you consider 1:1 mapping between an aggregation switch and a PE please?

Each edge router connects to its own aggregation switch (one or more,
depending on the number of ports required). The outgoing EX4550's we
used were setup in a VC for ease of management when we needed more ports
on a router-switch pair. But since Arista don't support VC's, each
switch would have an independent port to the edge router. Based upon
experience with VC's and the EX4550, that's not necessarily a bad thing,
as what you provision and what you actually get and can use are totally
different things.

We do not dual-home aggregation switches to edge routers; that's just
asking for STP issues (which we once faced when we thought we should be
fancy and provide VRRP services between 2 edge routers and their
associated aggregated switches.

Mark.