While the QFX in general is similar to Jericho-based platforms, I think the QFX10002 is perhaps not an ideal comparison. At 100G, there is a significant density penalty on that platform, as you can use all 36 ports at 40G, but only 12 ports at 100G. BGP convergence in the newer EOS releases is indeed very, very fast. On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 12:08 PM, Colton Conor <colton.conor@gmail.com> wrote:
Saku,
I guess you are right the QFX10002-36Q is probably a better comparison. But let's be honest, Juniper is not going to sell a QFX10002-36Q for less than $20k like Arista will do for a semi- similar box. Even with a high discount (like 90 percent off list), the Juniper QFX10002-36Q at $360k list price comes nowhere close on the price point. Cisco, Juniper, ALU, etc are all not going to see a low cost high density fixed switch because that would cannibalize on their sales on the larger platforms. I really think Arista is kind of unique here as they don't have another routing platform to cannibalize, so they are competitively pricing their platform.
So I guess the question becomes, what features are missing that Arista does not currently have? They seems to be adding more and more features, and taking more market share. Here is a list of features supported: https://www.arista.com/en/support/product-documentation/supported-features I have not personally used Arista myself, but I like what I am seeing as far as price point, company culture, and repruatation in the market place. I know their switching is solid, but I am not sure about their routing.
Arista claims to have much, much faster BGP convergence time than all the other vendors.
On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 1:20 PM, Saku Ytti <saku@ytti.fi> wrote:
On 23 April 2016 at 10:52, Tom Hill <tom@ninjabadger.net> wrote:
In broad strokes: for your money you're either getting port density, or more features per port. The only difference here is that there's suddenly more TCAM on the device, and I still don't see the above changing too drastically.
Yeah OP is comparing high touch chip (MX104) to low touch chip (Jericho) that is not fair comparison. And cost is what customer is willing to pay, regardless of sticker on the box. No one will pay significant mark-up for another sticker, I've never seen in RFP significant differences in comparable products.
Fairer comparison would be QFX10k, instead of MX104. QFX10k is AFAIK only product in this segment which is not using Jericho. If this is competitive advantage or risk, jury is still out, I lean towards competitive advantage, mainly due to its memory design.
-- ++ytti