I wonder if anybody one there has had experience with both xedia and packeteer and would let me know what the strengths and weaknesses was of each Michael Gibson Team Leader, Network Operations - Netcom Canada Telephone: 416-341-5751 Fax: 416-341-5725 magibson@netcom.ca
I'm doing such a comparison right now.. Here are the things I am concerned about: Xedia: Does T3/ATM interfaces and routes Packeteer: Bridge Ethernet only. Xedia: 600 individual profiles Packeteer: 4096 (I think, double checking that with them) Xedia: Doesn't need two routers Packeteer: Since it only bridges, it has to be between two intelligent devices. I don't think looping it out and back to the same Cisco would work. Since I need more profiles, I am leaning toward a Packeteer. If anyone else has notes, I would like to hear them. ----------------- Brian Curnow ---------------- On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, Michael Gibson wrote:
I wonder if anybody one there has had experience with both xedia and packeteer and would let me know what the strengths and weaknesses was of each
Michael Gibson Team Leader, Network Operations - Netcom Canada Telephone: 416-341-5751 Fax: 416-341-5725 magibson@netcom.ca
Thus spake bcurnow
Xedia: Does T3/ATM interfaces and routes
Also bridges if that's what you need.
Packeteer: Bridge Ethernet only.
Xedia: Doesn't need two routers Packeteer: Since it only bridges, it has to be between two intelligent devices. I don't think looping it out and back to the same Cisco would work.
It *could*, but it would involve policy routing on the cisco...blech. -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456
Packeteer replied.. Only 512 classes currently managed, but they claim they are going to raise that 'significantly' in the next '3' months. ----------------- Brian Curnow ----------------
I've been using the Packetshapper 4000 and have been having terrible performance when I consistantly push out 20Mbps+. The pshaper4k sits between my edge router and my backbone FE switch (so all traffic goes through it). Withouth going into too much detail, when the box inline with power on (and shaping on or off), I get about 10% packet drop and anywhere from 20ms-1000ms delay going through that box. If I power it off or take it out of the picture, problem goes away. I've hit some limits because before I was consistantly above 20Mbps, the box worked very well. I've had the tech guys take a look at it and they did mention I was hitting some hard limits. - mz On Fri, Oct 30, 1998 at 09:25:16AM -0800, bcurnow wrote:
I'm doing such a comparison right now..
Here are the things I am concerned about:
Xedia: Does T3/ATM interfaces and routes Packeteer: Bridge Ethernet only.
Xedia: 600 individual profiles Packeteer: 4096 (I think, double checking that with them)
Xedia: Doesn't need two routers Packeteer: Since it only bridges, it has to be between two intelligent devices. I don't think looping it out and back to the same Cisco would work.
Since I need more profiles, I am leaning toward a Packeteer.
If anyone else has notes, I would like to hear them.
----------------- Brian Curnow ----------------
On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, Michael Gibson wrote:
I wonder if anybody one there has had experience with both xedia and packeteer and would let me know what the strengths and weaknesses was of each
Michael Gibson Team Leader, Network Operations - Netcom Canada Telephone: 416-341-5751 Fax: 416-341-5725 magibson@netcom.ca
-- matthew zeier - "Chance is irrelevant - we will succeed." - 7 of 9
Matthew: What version of code are you running in your 4000 -- I see no such latency issues nor packet drop and we regularly push 20+ Mb through our boxes... sits between a Cisco 75xx and Catalyst 5000 Switch. Are you using the same cable/cables when you place the packetshaper in the network vs. when it is out? Also, have you looked at the CLI for the NIC stats? Chris At 02:35 PM 10/30/98 -0600, matthew zeier wrote:
I've been using the Packetshapper 4000 and have been having terrible performance when I consistantly push out 20Mbps+. The pshaper4k sits between my edge router and my backbone FE switch (so all traffic goes through it).
Withouth going into too much detail, when the box inline with power on (and shaping on or off), I get about 10% packet drop and anywhere from 20ms-1000ms delay going through that box. If I power it off or take it out of the picture, problem goes away.
I've hit some limits because before I was consistantly above 20Mbps, the box worked very well. I've had the tech guys take a look at it and they did mention I was hitting some hard limits.
- mz
On Fri, Oct 30, 1998 at 09:25:16AM -0800, bcurnow wrote:
I'm doing such a comparison right now..
Here are the things I am concerned about:
Xedia: Does T3/ATM interfaces and routes Packeteer: Bridge Ethernet only.
Xedia: 600 individual profiles Packeteer: 4096 (I think, double checking that with them)
Xedia: Doesn't need two routers Packeteer: Since it only bridges, it has to be between two intelligent devices. I don't think looping it out and back to the same Cisco would work.
Since I need more profiles, I am leaning toward a Packeteer.
If anyone else has notes, I would like to hear them.
----------------- Brian Curnow ----------------
On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, Michael Gibson wrote:
I wonder if anybody one there has had experience with both xedia and packeteer and would let me know what the strengths and weaknesses was of each
Michael Gibson Team Leader, Network Operations - Netcom Canada Telephone: 416-341-5751 Fax: 416-341-5725 magibson@netcom.ca
-- matthew zeier - "Chance is irrelevant - we will succeed." - 7 of 9
,,, (o-o) ------.oOO--(_)--OOo.--------------------------------------------- Christofer L. Hoff, CCSE \ No true genius is Chief Nerd & Packet Pusher \ possible without a NodeWarrior Networks, Inc \ little intelligent \ madness! hoff@nodewarrior.net \ http://www.nodewarrior.net \ -Peter Uberoth "Nuthin' but Net!" \ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 310.568.1700 vox - 310.568.4766 fax
I got some followups/corrections on key points which I feel I should distribute: The person from Xedia who told me 600 was the class limit, emailed me again and realized that I might really mean how many end points under control of those classes. The answer I came away with is that the Xedia can support a lot more end points (users) than 600. Hope I got that right. :) An engineer at UU.net also said 600 was too low, and that it is more an issue of how much RAM is in the box. He said thousands, which sounds promising. So, if I had to buy today, it looks like Xedia is the one to have if you're doing things on a large scale. ----------------- Brian Curnow ----------------
I was told that the xedia boxes only shape outgoing bandwidth, not incoming. I haven't had the chance to ask xedia about this yet, and haven't gotten their box in yet, so I'm not positive if this is true, but you may want to check it out before buying. On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, bcurnow wrote:
I got some followups/corrections on key points which I feel I should distribute:
The person from Xedia who told me 600 was the class limit, emailed me again and realized that I might really mean how many end points under control of those classes. The answer I came away with is that the Xedia can support a lot more end points (users) than 600. Hope I got that right. :)
An engineer at UU.net also said 600 was too low, and that it is more an issue of how much RAM is in the box. He said thousands, which sounds promising.
So, if I had to buy today, it looks like Xedia is the one to have if you're doing things on a large scale.
----------------- Brian Curnow ----------------
Thank you, Jonathan A. Zdziarski Sr. Systems Administrator Netrail, inc. 888.NET.RAIL x240
I was told that the xedia boxes only shape outgoing bandwidth, not incoming. I haven't had the chance to ask xedia about this yet, and haven't gotten their box in yet, so I'm not positive if this is true, but you may want to check it out before buying.
We have several of the Xedia boxes, and they shape only on the outgoing port; of course, this simply means that you can configure two different CBQ's for a given IP or port range, one on the "outgoing" port to the server, and one on the "outgoing" port to the rest of the net. :) It's an issue of technical correctness versus real utility. So the real answer is that the Xedia can rate shape in both directions, it simply does the rate shaping on the corresponding "out" interface for the particular direction of traffic. Hope this helps! Matt
On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, bcurnow wrote:
I got some followups/corrections on key points which I feel I should distribute:
The person from Xedia who told me 600 was the class limit, emailed me again and realized that I might really mean how many end points under control of those classes. The answer I came away with is that the Xedia can support a lot more end points (users) than 600. Hope I got that right. :)
An engineer at UU.net also said 600 was too low, and that it is more an issue of how much RAM is in the box. He said thousands, which sounds promising.
So, if I had to buy today, it looks like Xedia is the one to have if you're doing things on a large scale.
----------------- Brian Curnow ----------------
Thank you,
Jonathan A. Zdziarski Sr. Systems Administrator Netrail, inc. 888.NET.RAIL x240
We had similar problems like this. While our problems haven't gone entirely away, support at packeteer gave us some suggestions which dramatically fixed some of the problems... - Upgrade to the latest code (3.1.3g I believe) - Make sure your available bandwidth is set to 45MB not 100MB. - Make sure both NIC cards are set the same (if you do a 'net nic 0' and 'net nic 1' in the CLI, it will show you whether or not they're both running at full duplex, half, or a combination of both). If they're set differently (e.g. we had one set to 100 Half and the other 100 Full), it will think it's got more bandwidth available than it actually does (so I'm told) One of the main problems we're dealing with now is incoming traffic. If you upload something (ftp) over the physical LAN, it will use most if not all available bandwidth, however if you upload something over a T1, etc, that 20K you might get over ethernet becomes 4K (we've cancelled out the possibility of it being the network it's going through). I think this may have something to do with the shaper sending certain TCP retries or sending back packets in way that a 100MB ethernet link can recover quickly, but the general internet cannot. Another issue (which is likely related to the first), is if you reach a customer's peak burstable rate, transfers freeze up for 3-5 seconds, as if it's stopping all packets going to through the partition rather than allowing the peak amount through. This isn't a big deal for customers using 50% of their bandwidth, but for 256k or 512k partitions it presents a problem. packeteer is looking into this. On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, matthew zeier wrote:
I've been using the Packetshapper 4000 and have been having terrible performance when I consistantly push out 20Mbps+. The pshaper4k sits between my edge router and my backbone FE switch (so all traffic goes through it).
Withouth going into too much detail, when the box inline with power on (and shaping on or off), I get about 10% packet drop and anywhere from 20ms-1000ms delay going through that box. If I power it off or take it out of the picture, problem goes away.
I've hit some limits because before I was consistantly above 20Mbps, the box worked very well. I've had the tech guys take a look at it and they did mention I was hitting some hard limits.
- mz
On Fri, Oct 30, 1998 at 09:25:16AM -0800, bcurnow wrote:
I'm doing such a comparison right now..
Here are the things I am concerned about:
Xedia: Does T3/ATM interfaces and routes Packeteer: Bridge Ethernet only.
Xedia: 600 individual profiles Packeteer: 4096 (I think, double checking that with them)
Xedia: Doesn't need two routers Packeteer: Since it only bridges, it has to be between two intelligent devices. I don't think looping it out and back to the same Cisco would work.
Since I need more profiles, I am leaning toward a Packeteer.
If anyone else has notes, I would like to hear them.
----------------- Brian Curnow ----------------
On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, Michael Gibson wrote:
I wonder if anybody one there has had experience with both xedia and packeteer and would let me know what the strengths and weaknesses was of each
Michael Gibson Team Leader, Network Operations - Netcom Canada Telephone: 416-341-5751 Fax: 416-341-5725 magibson@netcom.ca
-- matthew zeier - "Chance is irrelevant - we will succeed." - 7 of 9
Thank you, Jonathan A. Zdziarski Sr. Systems Administrator Netrail, inc. 888.NET.RAIL x240
participants (7)
-
bcurnow -
hoff＠nodewarrior.net -
Jeff Mcadams -
Jonathan A. Zdziarski -
Matthew Petach -
matthew zeier -
Michael Gibson