Anyone care to share their experiences with the GRF? I am interested in hearing some real world opinions on its ease of use, stability, compatibility, and realiability. Private emails are fine if you don't want public. Thanks in advance for any insight. Mark Tripod Senior Backbone Engineer Exodus Communications
On Thu, 06 Nov 1997 02:23:29 -0800 Mark Tripod <mark@elvis.exodus.net> wrote:
Anyone care to share their experiences with the GRF? I am interested in hearing some real world opinions on its ease of use, stability, compatibility, and realiability. Private emails are fine if you don't want public.
Ease of use: Helps if you've used gated before, the diagnostic tools on things like loopback tests and actual line protocol debuging could be much better. Upgrading the box is simplicity when you have to do it. The ATM cards configuration could be less "cross your fingers and hope for the best" I've found that when I do something the card needs a reboot, there is no indication of this on config time. Stability/Reliablilty Well with the exception of the above they are very stable, we've not have any crashes in over 6 months of use. We had one duff FDDI card and one power supply went, but the traps pick this up. The snmp code neads a few tweaks it loses the configureation of the machine every now and again. Compatibility: I've had it running with Cisco 4000, 7000 ATM and HSSI, Nortel Passport 110 several Fore systems switches, Xylan switches, on frame, atm, ethernet and FDDI. I've not tested the new cisco hdlc code yet, but I doubt there will be a problem with this. gated works well with communities and all the usual routing stuff, has ISIS support which seems to work although I've not really done a major test on that. PVC and SVC's seem to work OK. It desperatly suffers from a lack of T1/E1 ports. Overall its a good box, we have 5 of them, on a STM-1 triangulated network and one on the LINX FDDI all seems well, however we're a newish ISP so we're not pushing them as hard as say someone like Demon Internet might. Any other questions feel free to ask. Regards, Neil. -- Neil J. McRae. Alive and Kicking. Domino: In the glow of the night. neil@DOMINO.ORG NetBSD/sparc: 100% SpF (Solaris protection Factor) Free the daemon in your <A HREF="http://www.NetBSD.ORG/">computer!</A>
First let me state that I know more Cisco IOS than GateD. Secondly, I was REALLY interested in the GRF, and I had heard great things about it, so I went into trying out the GRF without prejudice. Now, we got our GRF 400 from Ascend in the middle of August of this year, and It was an impressive piece of equipment. My first problem with it out of the box was the "The GRF for Dummies" instruction manual. The docs on setting up the ATM interface were inaccurate, and after 3 calls to their technical support we were able to get the OC-3 ATM interface to work. After that, I had OSPF working on it in under 5 minutes, and was seeing routes in the IP table acquired via OSPF, so I was confident. Getting BGP configured in any sort of usable state was a different story, but after a few days it was set up and working. After all of this, I was losing confidence in it's ability to work reliably. After we let it run for a while, we noticed the GateD daemon would just die at weird times with no error messages. So, we tried changing the config, looking for any sort of misconfiguration, and found none. We also had a problem with the GRF not acctepting all the routes from our upstream, but when I tried to use their monitoring utility to see the routes, it was missing a key feature; the pause after it showed one screens worth of data. Nothing like seeing a full routing table flash before you, and if you tried to ctrl-c out of it, you killed gated. It was just really frustrating, and we decided to send it back for a Cisco 7200. The GRF has great potential, but the monitoring tools, SNMP daemon, and documentation need to be completely redone. Not to mention that looking on their web site for technical information or setup help on a product is pointless. Even though it was a brand new product and we were supposed to get immediate support on it for the first 30-90 days, it took between 2-6 hours to get a call back from Ascend tech support for configuration help. At least with Cisco, if I have a question or a problem, I can usually check out their web page or the cd-rom and get the answer. Your network and needs may vary and the GRF may work great in your situation. For mine it did not. Joe Shaw - jshaw@insync.net NetAdmin - Insync Internet Services "Learn more, and you will never starve." - Paraphrase of Lee On Thu, 6 Nov 1997, Mark Tripod wrote:
Anyone care to share their experiences with the GRF? I am interested in hearing some real world opinions on its ease of use, stability, compatibility, and realiability. Private emails are fine if you don't want public.
Thanks in advance for any insight.
Mark Tripod Senior Backbone Engineer Exodus Communications
On Thu, 6 Nov 1997 09:44:33 -0600 (CST) Joe Shaw <jshaw@insync.net> wrote:
Now, we got our GRF 400 from Ascend in the middle of August of this year, and It was an impressive piece of equipment. My first problem with it out of the box was the "The GRF for Dummies" instruction manual. The docs on setting up the ATM interface were inaccurate, and after 3 calls to their technical support we were able to get the OC-3 ATM interface to work.
Yah the docs do suck a little, fortunetly I manage to figure it out without phone ascend.
After that, I had OSPF working on it in under 5 minutes, and was seeing routes in the IP table acquired via OSPF, so I was confident. Getting BGP configured in any sort of usable state was a different story, but after a few days it was set up and working. After all of this, I was losing confidence in it's ability to work reliably.
After we let it run for a while, we noticed the GateD daemon would just die at weird times with no error messages. So, we tried changing the config,
I don't believe this at all. One good thing about gated is that it has loads of logging features.
looking for any sort of misconfiguration, and found none. We also had a problem with the GRF not acctepting all the routes from our upstream, but when I tried to use their monitoring utility to see the routes, it was missing a key feature; the pause after it showed one screens worth of data. Nothing like seeing a full routing table flash before you, and if you tried to ctrl-c out of it, you killed gated.
I agree about the pause, but ^c doesn't kill gated it kills gsm.
It was just really frustrating, and we decided to send it back for a Cisco 7200. The GRF has great potential, but the monitoring tools, SNMP daemon, and documentation need to be completely redone.
The monitoring tools are not that bad IMO, the page pausing is a pain I agree but yes the documentation needs more. ESP on gated.
Not to mention that looking on their web site for technical information or setup help on a product is pointless. Even though it was a brand new product and we were supposed to get immediate support on it for the first 30-90 days, it took between 2-6 hours to get a call back from Ascend tech support for configuration help. At least with Cisco, if I have a question or a problem, I can usually check out their web page or the cd-rom and get the answer.
This is true.
Your network and needs may vary and the GRF may work great in your situation. For mine it did not.
As I know gated well I guess I had an advantage in know gated. I've not had any problems with it seeing routes via BGP, OSPF is a little buggy and I think Ascend would do well to put on hold the IS-IS stuff [no doubt UUnet are pushing for this] and finish getting the other stuff finished. Regards, Neil. -- Neil J. McRae. Alive and Kicking. Domino: In the glow of the night. neil@DOMINO.ORG NetBSD/sparc: 100% SpF (Solaris protection Factor) Free the daemon in your <A HREF="http://www.NetBSD.ORG/">computer!</A>
At 04:00 PM 06-11-97 +0000, you wrote:
On Thu, 6 Nov 1997 09:44:33 -0600 (CST) Joe Shaw <jshaw@insync.net> wrote:
After we let it run for a while, we noticed the GateD daemon would just die at weird times with no error messages. So, we tried changing the config,
I don't believe this at all. One good thing about gated is that it has loads of logging features.
[ snip ] I can confirm both. We had *exactly* the same issue with the GRF. Random ethernet resets on the rmb <-> eip with no explanation 'cept a release of new code. Ascend had told me something about intergap delay problems with the Cajun. Regards, -- Martin Hannigan hannigan@xcom.net Director of Data Networks V:617.500.0108 XCOM Technologies F:617.500.0002 Cambridge, MA http://www.xcom.net
Anyone care to share their experiences with the GRF? I am interested in hearing some real world opinions on its ease of use, stability, compatibility, and realiability. Private emails are fine if you don't want public.
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participants (5)
-
Joe Shaw -
Mark Tripod -
Martin Hannigan -
Neil J. McRae -
Phil Howard