Hi, just a quickie (respond via e-mail, I'll summarize to the list)... Need to build a core NSP backbone. Who's equipment do I want: 1) cisco 2) Bay 3) 3Com Please include model, personal likes/dislikes, caveats, etc, etc... Thanks! Bakeoff ends May 31st/98... ~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-.._..-*~ Rob M. VanHooren - Chief Plumber, +1 519 679-1155 x33 Packet Pusher, and Resident Mad Scientist(tm) Alarms to 646-4724 Network Engineering Services 171 Queens Avenue, Suite 320 Linkdata Communications Inc. London, CANADA
Rob M VanHooren writes:
Hi, just a quickie (respond via e-mail, I'll summarize to the list)...
Need to build a core NSP backbone.
Who's equipment do I want:
Like this is a question? You don't want Bay and you certainly don't want 3Com. If your network is fairly slow (ethernets and T1s only) you can use PCs running a reasonable BSD and GateD. Otherwise, the only commercial choice is Cisco. .pm
1) cisco 2) Bay 3) 3Com
Please include model, personal likes/dislikes, caveats, etc, etc...
Thanks! Bakeoff ends May 31st/98...
~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-.._..-*~ Rob M. VanHooren - Chief Plumber, +1 519 679-1155 x33 Packet Pusher, and Resident Mad Scientist(tm) Alarms to 646-4724 Network Engineering Services 171 Queens Avenue, Suite 320 Linkdata Communications Inc. London, CANADA
On Thu, May 07, 1998 at 04:54:27PM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
Rob M VanHooren writes:
Hi, just a quickie (respond via e-mail, I'll summarize to the list)...
Need to build a core NSP backbone.
Who's equipment do I want:
Like this is a question?
You don't want Bay and you certainly don't want 3Com. If your network is fairly slow (ethernets and T1s only) you can use PCs running a reasonable BSD and GateD. Otherwise, the only commercial choice is Cisco.
.pm
FreeBSD and decent networking cards (ie: Intel PRO100Bs) can route a couple of 100Mbps switched fast ethernets (yes, full duplex too) The Pentium Pro 200 is the processor of choice for this; the Pentium II, at least until the new version announced at Spring Comdex with the full-speed secondary cache and SLOT 2 ships, is slower than the Pentium Pro 200 in this application. This will hold you up to ~100 - 150Mbps in total throughput. Beyond that you're talking CISCO, at least in my experience. If you're seriously doing this you need to get on-staff a REAL routing engineer who has done this in the past and knows what the hell he or she is doing. They're rare and pricey, but you need one. Contrary to popular belief, national networks are not simple to set up in a way which will insure that they have maximum survivability and performance. -- -- Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.Net)| MCSNet - Serving Chicagoland and Wisconsin http://www.mcs.net/ | T1's from $600 monthly / All Lines K56Flex/DOV | NEW! Corporate ISDN Prices dropped by up to 50%! Voice: [+1 312 803-MCS1 x219]| EXCLUSIVE NEW FEATURE ON ALL PERSONAL ACCOUNTS Fax: [+1 312 803-4929] | *SPAMBLOCK* Technology now included at no cost
Karl Denninger writes:
You don't want Bay and you certainly don't want 3Com. If your network is fairly slow (ethernets and T1s only) you can use PCs running a reasonable BSD and GateD. Otherwise, the only commercial choice is Cisco.
FreeBSD and decent networking cards (ie: Intel PRO100Bs) can route a couple of 100Mbps switched fast ethernets (yes, full duplex too)
Yeah, but you'll have trouble getting decent T3 cards for it. Its true that 100Mbps ethernet should be fine. BTW, NetBSD with the recent flow cache mods can handle at least 150,000 packets per second. We haven't seen what the actual upper limit is, but that number doesn't seem to be eating a lot of CPU.
Contrary to popular belief, national networks are not simple to set up in a way which will insure that they have maximum survivability and performance.
Amen. .pm
Yeah, but you'll have trouble getting decent T3 cards for it. Its true that 100Mbps ethernet should be fine.
What is the current state of T3 cards for PCs (or for the PCI bus in general)? We looked into this a year or so ago and weren't particularly impressed. Michael +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Michael H. Lambert, Network Engineer Phone: +1 412 268-4960 | | Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center FAX: +1 412 268-8200 | | 4400 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 lambert@psc.edu | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
http://www.sdlcomm.com/products/reseller_products.html http://www.lanmedia.com On Thu, 7 May 1998, Michael H. Lambert wrote:
Yeah, but you'll have trouble getting decent T3 cards for it. Its true that 100Mbps ethernet should be fine.
What is the current state of T3 cards for PCs (or for the PCI bus in general)? We looked into this a year or so ago and weren't particularly impressed.
Michael
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Michael H. Lambert, Network Engineer Phone: +1 412 268-4960 | | Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center FAX: +1 412 268-8200 | | 4400 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 lambert@psc.edu | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Atheism is a non-prophet organization. I route, therefore I am. Alex Rubenstein, alex@nac.net, KC2BUO, ISP/C Charter Member Father of the Network and Head Bottle-Washer Net Access Corporation, 9 Mt. Pleasant Tpk., Denville, NJ 07834 Don't choose a spineless ISP! We have more backbone! http://www.nac.net -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
What is the current state of T3 cards for PCs (or for the PCI bus in general)? We looked into this a year or so ago and weren't particularly impressed.
I've had pretty good experiences with the SDL card. -- Jason Weisberger Chief Technology Officer SoftAware, Inc. - 310/305-0275 "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees." -Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson
If you're seriously doing this you need to get on-staff a REAL routing engineer who has done this in the past and knows what the hell he or she is doing. They're rare and pricey, but you need one.
Contrary to popular belief, national networks are not simple to set up in a way which will insure that they have maximum survivability and performance.
Naw, they just need a copy of Global Internet Routing for Dummies, the Metropolitan Area Ethernet Starter Kit and ISP in a Box. -- Jason Weisberger Chief Technology Officer SoftAware, Inc. - 310/305-0275 "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees." -Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson
On 05/07/98, "Jason L. Weisberger" <jweis@softaware.com> wrote:
Naw, they just need a copy of Global Internet Routing for Dummies, the Metropolitan Area Ethernet Starter Kit and ISP in a Box.
Last time I saw somebody try to fit an entire ISP in a box, they ran into a problem: no room for customers. -- J.D. Falk <jdfalk@vix.com> Vixie Enterprises http://www.vix.com/
Rob M VanHooren writes:
Hi, just a quickie (respond via e-mail, I'll summarize to the list)...
Need to build a core NSP backbone.
Who's equipment do I want:
Like this is a question?
You don't want Bay and you certainly don't want 3Com. If your network is fairly slow (ethernets and T1s only) you can use PCs running a reasonable BSD and GateD. Otherwise, the only commercial choice is Cisco.
Perry, may I ask why you exclude Bay and 3Com? Any particular bad experience from the previous life? And Rob, it you're building a backbone I'd add Ascend's GRF to the list. -- Gregory Mirsky Bay Networks, Inc. Direct: 978-916-3772 600 Technology Park Drive Fax: 978-670-8760 Billerica, MA 01821 E-mail: gmirsky@baynetworks.com
Gregory Mirsky writes:
Perry, may I ask why you exclude Bay and 3Com? Any particular bad experience from the previous life?
I've only actually had bad experience with Bay stuff -- 3Com isn't even in the running for the most part -- the software doesn't even pretend to be able to do the job for a backbone.
And Rob, it you're building a backbone I'd add Ascend's GRF to the list.
Actually, I rather like the architecture of the GRF, though I must admit to have never tried one out. I've heard some good things and they might be worth a test or two. Perry
On Thu, 07 May 1998 17:33:03 -0400, perry@piermont.com writes:
Gregory Mirsky writes:
Perry, may I ask why you exclude Bay and 3Com? Any particular bad experience from the previous life?
I've only actually had bad experience with Bay stuff -- 3Com isn't even in the running for the most part -- the software doesn't even pretend to be able to do the job for a backbone.
I've had really good experience with Bay stuff (when I was a customer) which is why I work for Bay now. I'm interested in hearing what the bad experiences were and if they still apply today. -Jon ----------------------------------------------------------------- * Jon Green * "Life's a dance * * jcgreen@netINS.net * you learn as you go" * * Finger for Geek Code/PGP * * * #include "std_disclaimer.h" * http://www.netins.net/showcase/jcgreen * -------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Thu, May 07, 1998 at 05:33:03PM -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
Gregory Mirsky writes:
Perry, may I ask why you exclude Bay and 3Com? Any particular bad experience from the previous life?
I've only actually had bad experience with Bay stuff -- 3Com isn't even in the running for the most part -- the software doesn't even pretend to be able to do the job for a backbone.
And Rob, it you're building a backbone I'd add Ascend's GRF to the list.
Actually, I rather like the architecture of the GRF, though I must admit to have never tried one out. I've heard some good things and they might be worth a test or two.
Perry
Well, the GRF has its good and bad points. I've tested one rather extensively, although I admit it was some time (~8-9 months) ago. -- -- Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.Net)| MCSNet - Serving Chicagoland and Wisconsin http://www.mcs.net/ | T1's from $600 monthly / All Lines K56Flex/DOV | NEW! Corporate ISDN Prices dropped by up to 50%! Voice: [+1 312 803-MCS1 x219]| EXCLUSIVE NEW FEATURE ON ALL PERSONAL ACCOUNTS Fax: [+1 312 803-4929] | *SPAMBLOCK* Technology now included at no cost
On Thu, 7 May 1998, Karl Denninger wrote:
Well, the GRF has its good and bad points. I've tested one rather extensively, although I admit it was some time (~8-9 months) ago.
I've been rather upset with Ascend over their lack of reaction to the bug in the Pipe 150 that had it publishing ARP statments for every ip address that went by its ethernet interface. Have you found their other products to be better supported and safer to fire and forget? jlw -- Jason Weisberger Chief Technology Officer SoftAware, Inc. - 310/305-0275 "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees." -Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson
On Thu, May 07, 1998 at 06:45:46PM -0700, Jason L. Weisberger wrote:
On Thu, 7 May 1998, Karl Denninger wrote:
Well, the GRF has its good and bad points. I've tested one rather extensively, although I admit it was some time (~8-9 months) ago.
I've been rather upset with Ascend over their lack of reaction to the bug in the Pipe 150 that had it publishing ARP statments for every ip address that went by its ethernet interface. Have you found their other products to be better supported and safer to fire and forget?
jlw
Well, I got rather, uh, pissed at the MAX 4000s desire to publish both a /32 and a /29 route for all OSPF announcements on dial interfaces (which went unaddressed in the code for literally months) - particularly troublesome when you consider the limited RAM in those boxes (and the consequence of running out of it - it would just drop the OSPF process entirely!), not to mention a direct violation of the OSPF specifications and the cause of many complaints from other equipment which this generated. I've heard they have cleaned up their software act in the last several months; other than P130s as customer routers for DS1 users (of which we have a boatload deployed) I have zero *current* operational experience with their equipment, so my knowledge base on them is ~6-9 months old. Then again, I'm a SOB when it comes to standards complience, especially when lack thereof breaks something that we *NEED* around here (such as reliable service :-). I still don't like CISCO's RAS implementations, but I have to say this - for all their warts, including some business policies that I consider nothing short of INSANE, their router hardware and IOS still win the prize for uptime in my experience. A real example from our core: XXXXXXX-CoreX uptime is 38 weeks, 1 day, 7 hours, 49 minutes System restarted by power-on That's pretty typical around here; the last "power on" was to do routine maintenance on that particular device. :-) -- -- Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.Net)| MCSNet - Serving Chicagoland and Wisconsin http://www.mcs.net/ | T1's from $600 monthly / All Lines K56Flex/DOV | NEW! Corporate ISDN Prices dropped by up to 50%! Voice: [+1 312 803-MCS1 x219]| EXCLUSIVE NEW FEATURE ON ALL PERSONAL ACCOUNTS Fax: [+1 312 803-4929] | *SPAMBLOCK* Technology now included at no cost
On Thu, May 07, 1998 at 09:30:21PM -0500, Karl Denninger wrote:
I still don't like CISCO's RAS implementations, but I have to say this - for all their warts, including some business policies that I consider nothing short of INSANE, their router hardware and IOS still win the prize for uptime in my experience.
An anecdote that is related to this... In January, on the day we (NACS.NET) had our open house, the RSP-2 board in our 7513 (which we bought used) died. Cisco worked with us to get a replacement in four hours, even though they were only contractually obligated to 24 hours. Kudos to Cisco's Cleveland office for going WAY beyond the call of duty. And when I'm ready to buy a dedicated router, it WILL be a Cisco. (Oh yeah. Other than that, no downtime issues yet.) -- Steven J. Sobol - Founding Member, Postmaster/Webmaster, ISP Liaison -- Forum for Responsible & Ethical E-mail (FREE) - Dedicated to education about, and prevention of, Unsolicited Broadcast E-mail (UBE), also known as SPAM. Info: http://www.ybecker.net or Usenet: <6i6eeu$kr9$1@camel18.mindspring.com> mailto: sjsobol@nstc.com, sjsobol@nacs.net, sjsobol@apk.net
"Jason L. Weisberger" writes:
On Thu, 7 May 1998, Karl Denninger wrote:
Well, the GRF has its good and bad points. I've tested one rather extensively, although I admit it was some time (~8-9 months) ago.
I've been rather upset with Ascend over their lack of reaction to the bug in the Pipe 150 that had it publishing ARP statments for every ip address that went by its ethernet interface. Have you found their other products to be better supported and safer to fire and forget?
The GRF started as a product from another company (Netstar?) that Ascend bought, and it has a different software base. That said, I have no personal experience with the GRF and don't know if it works well. It just looks neat from what I can tell. .pm
Jason, About a year ago I heard a rumor that a pretty good sized batch of Ascend P50s made it out of the factory with the same MAC address. Of course, this is semi-OK if they all go to seperate sites, but the Max 1800 was not in widespread use at that time, so the only option for doing dedicated ISDN BRI <-> BRI was to have a rack full of P50s. You can imagine what fun the poor guy that had to figure that one out went through before he figured out the real problem, called Ascend, and explained to them how ARP works... Blake Willis CAIS Engineering --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Blake Willis 703-448-4470x483 Network Engineer, New Customers blakew@cais.net CAIS Internet, a CGX Communications Company --------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Thu, 7 May 1998, Jason L. Weisberger wrote:
I've been rather upset with Ascend over their lack of reaction to the bug in the Pipe 150 that had it publishing ARP statments for every ip address that went by its ethernet interface. Have you found their other products to be better supported and safer to fire and forget?
Jason Weisberger Chief Technology Officer SoftAware, Inc. - 310/305-0275
On Thu, 7 May 1998 18:45:46 -0700 (PDT) "Jason L. Weisberger" <jweis@softaware.com> wrote:
On Thu, 7 May 1998, Karl Denninger wrote:
Well, the GRF has its good and bad points. I've tested one rather extensively, although I admit it was some time (~8-9 months) ago.
I've been rather upset with Ascend over their lack of reaction to the bug in the Pipe 150 that had it publishing ARP statments for every ip address that went by its ethernet interface. Have you found their other products to be better supported and safer to fire and forget?
AFAIK there is no such thing as a PIPE-150, and if you have proxy arp switched on then you might see this behavour. You did read the manual ? :-) I use the GRF-400 and it works well, Although I agree that Ascends current support management is completely broken. As for Ethernet, in my experience if you push anything near to 100M you should really spend the extra cash on FDDI, it works far better. The POS card for the GRF works excellently, you can use it as a frame relay switch, however Ascend manage to do stupid things like break your ability to restrict AS annoucements via AS path. sigh. For ethernet server farms I use Xylans Omniswitch which I've yet ever to have a problem with, other than they charge for software updates. I also use the Xylan as an FDDI switch and again it works incredibly well. Ascend's remote access division majorly screwed up with the TNT which caused a knock on effect to its other remote access products I do believe they have learned the lesson on that. But they still lack a good method of reporting problems and releasing tested code. I've also used BSD PC's [and orginally NetBSD/sparc] at Demon we had 2 lines to Sprint using Morningstar Snaplinks to drive them and GateD 3.4 and 3.5 on a 32M Sparc IPX :-). sl-dc-4 used to be an AGS, our PC performed better than that pile of junk! :-) If you are on a budget then buy a couple of pentiums and a copy of BSDI, BSDI works great as a router / server or a workstation. PC's are fine up to E1 speed, after that you loose, there are no good E3/DS-3 cards for a PC. BSDI have good support for a lot of strange devices including the RISCOM N2 serial card. [Where is the E1 card Ascend?] I've never used Cisco as a backbone router, used them for remote access and CPE and they do work well for that. I simply disagree that the Internet is built on Cisco and whilst they maintain that I won't purchase their equipment. Bay is a total nightmare, we have 2 Bay Networks connected customers, one never made their machine talk to our FR switch, the other had Bay at his site for 4 days whilst they tried to figure out a config. Regards, Neil. -- Neil J. McRae. Alive and Kicking. neil@DOMINO.ORG NetBSD-1.3.1 released! ftp://ftp.uk.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD Free the daemon in your <A HREF="http://www.NetBSD.ORG/">computer!</A>
While we're on this topic, what's a good v.35 card for the PC? Specifically, one that works nicely with FreeBSD? Thanks!
Adam Rothschild writes:
While we're on this topic, what's a good v.35 card for the PC? Specifically, one that works nicely with FreeBSD?
I'm looking for same to T1/E1 speed. But I need to have it work as a normal device and not via a specially supplied driver, or else the driver must be a source patch to the kernel. Linux would be preferred in my case, since I already know how to work with it's internals. A channelized T1 over T3 would also be of interest (same requirements of being able to work the source code still apply). -- Phil Howard | a3b5c7d4@noplace6.org eat59me3@lame2ads.net stop9878@anywhere.org phil | stop1ads@anywhere.org a0b9c2d7@dumbads5.com crash912@anywhere.org at | a6b5c9d0@no6where.org die7spam@noplace9.net end1ads8@dumb6ads.com ipal | die2spam@s0p8a1m9.org eat63me6@lame1ads.org die1spam@nowhere0.org dot | stop3ads@lame4ads.net end5ads6@lame8ads.org no69ads5@dumb7ads.edu net | blow8me9@dumb2ads.org a3b4c2d1@spammer1.net blow7me7@dumbads0.org
On Fri, 8 May 1998, Adam Rothschild wrote:
While we're on this topic, what's a good v.35 card for the PC? Specifically, one that works nicely with FreeBSD?
You can get one from http://www.etinc.com In fact he'll also sell you a hard drive with FreeBSD preinstalled and configured if you want that. And he has a bandwidth manager to do traffic shaping for FreeBSD. -- Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael@memra.com
On Fri, 8 May 1998, Michael Dillon wrote:
On Fri, 8 May 1998, Adam Rothschild wrote:
While we're on this topic, what's a good v.35 card for the PC? Specifically, one that works nicely with FreeBSD?
You can get one from http://www.etinc.com In fact he'll also sell you a hard drive with FreeBSD preinstalled and configured if you want that. And he has a bandwidth manager to do traffic shaping for FreeBSD.
You may want to call NetRail. I had a box of 40 or so 2 port Emerging Tech cards in storage when we moved from PC routers to the GRFs. Not sure if they know they exist though.
<> Nathan Stratton Telecom & ISP Consulting www.robotics.net nathan@robotics.net
-- Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael@memra.com
Subject: Re: Core router bakeoff?
AFAIK there is no such thing as a PIPE-150, and if you have proxy arp switched on then you might see this behavour. You did read the manual ? :-)
I use the GRF-400 and it works well, Although I agree that Ascends current support management is completely broken. As for Ethernet, in my experience if you push anything near to 100M you should really spend the extra cash on FDDI, it works far better. The POS card for the GRF works excellently, you can use it as a frame relay switch, however Ascend manage to do stupid things like break your ability to restrict AS annoucements via AS path. sigh.
Neil, We saw a rough limit of about 45k pps through the grf oc3 pos card. Have you seen better, or has it not been an issue for traffic pattern reasons or something? RobS
AFAIK there is no such thing as a PIPE-150, and if you have proxy arp switched on then you might see this behavour. You did read the manual ? :-)
Is it the 130 then? Who cares? Yes, we read the manual. Yes we called Ascend. There was no mention in the manual about the machine systematically ARPing every local IP it saw to its MAC. I really don't feel this is acceptible behavior or that there is ever a reason to do a same-interface recieve and then publish of ARP information, unless you want to break a network. Ascend's comment was 'Oh yeah! We've seen that. Turn off NAT and proxyarp and that IP Route switch and that oughta do it, we're not sure whats going on really. No we don't have a software upgrade planned to fix it.' -- Jason Weisberger Chief Technology Officer SoftAware, Inc. - 310/305-0275 "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees." -Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson
On Fri, 8 May 1998, Jason L. Weisberger wrote:
Is it the 130 then? Who cares? Yes, we read the manual. Yes we called Ascend. There was no mention in the manual about the machine systematically ARPing every local IP it saw to its MAC. I really don't feel this is acceptible behavior or that there is ever a reason to do a same-interface recieve and then publish of ARP information, unless you want to break a network.
I've seen P50's do similar things. Of course, I specifically told the boss "do not buy P50's", so, of course, he had to do it. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Jon Lewis <jlewis@fdt.net> | http://noagent.com/?jl1 for cheap Network Administrator | life insurance over the net. Florida Digital Turnpike | ______http://inorganic5.fdt.net/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key____
At 05:33 PM 5/7/98 -0400, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
Gregory Mirsky writes:
And Rob, it you're building a backbone I'd add Ascend's GRF to the list.
Actually, I rather like the architecture of the GRF, though I must admit to have never tried one out. I've heard some good things and they might be worth a test or two.
i like the GRF 400 i have running in NYC pretty much, except for the terrible documentation. ascend tech support tells me a new, improved manual is on the way -- it'd definitely needed. some of the stuff in the manual they shipped me is simply wrong, and i've needed to pry correct information out of their tech support organization a number of points. i also agree with the other comments about ascend's software release group; they really need to get their act together. on the other hand, the port density and the cost per port on the GRF are both quite good, and the performance is definitely there. we're running the fast ethernet card, OC3c card, and FDDI card in ours, and they all are gettingg the job done. richard -- Richard Welty rwelty@neworks.net http://www.neworks.net
On Thu, 07 May 1998 16:54:27 -0400, perry@piermont.com writes:
Rob M VanHooren writes:
Hi, just a quickie (respond via e-mail, I'll summarize to the list)...
Need to build a core NSP backbone.
Who's equipment do I want:
Like this is a question?
You don't want Bay and you certainly don't want 3Com. If your network is fairly slow (ethernets and T1s only) you can use PCs running a reasonable BSD and GateD. Otherwise, the only commercial choice is Cisco.
Wait.. a Bay BCN will push 1 Gb/s through the box, but you are recommending a PC running GateD over a Bay router? If you are going to tell people "don't use this" a least give some reasons why to justify it. -Jon ----------------------------------------------------------------- * Jon Green * "Life's a dance * * jcgreen@netINS.net * you learn as you go" * * Finger for Geek Code/PGP * * * #include "std_disclaimer.h" * http://www.netins.net/showcase/jcgreen * -------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Green writes:
Wait.. a Bay BCN will push 1 Gb/s through the box,
Bay's have beautiful hardware architectures. The hardware is not the problem.
but you are recommending a PC running GateD over a Bay router?
At the low end, sure. They're cheap as all hell, easy to remote manage, easy to expand, and very efficient. With the right software, they are pretty damn nice. Lots of NSPs use the things these days -- Daemon in the U.K. used to do nothing but BSD boxes last time I checked. Perry
Perry E. Metzger wrote:
Jon Green writes:
but you are recommending a PC running GateD over a Bay router?
At the low end, sure. They're cheap as all hell, easy to remote manage, easy to expand, and very efficient. With the right software, they are pretty damn nice. Lots of NSPs use the things these days -- Daemon in the U.K. used to do nothing but BSD boxes last time I checked.
You mean Demon Internet ? We've branched out into Ascend GRFs too now ... couldn't find a HSSI card for a PC that we were happy with, and the BSD-like feel of the GRF appealed to us (it's nice to be able to run your own binaries on your routers, like sshd). Still have lots of PCs. Typical spec would be something like: P Pro 200, 128MB ram, OpenBSD 2.2, GateD 4.x, 4 Intel (or Digital) fast ethernet cards. We're also having reasonable success with some of the 4-port ZNYX ethernet cards. It's a solution that works so long as you don't want/need all the ethernets running at wire speed, and you're prepared to learn how GateD works. :) Regards, Andrew -- Andrew Bangs, Network Engineering Manager, Demon Internet Ltd andrewb@demon.net http://www.demon.net/ http://www.demon.nl/
Andrew Bangs writes:
We're also having reasonable success with some of the 4-port ZNYX ethernet cards.
It's a solution that works so long as you don't want/need all the ethernets running at wire speed, and you're prepared to learn how GateD works. :)
BTW, we are managing to get NetBSD to handle multiple ethernets at wire speed now that NetBSD-current has (still experimental) flow cache code in it. I'm expecting that when this stabilizes it is going to improve the *BSD situation even more. Perry
BTW, we are managing to get NetBSD to handle multiple ethernets at wire speed now that NetBSD-current has (still experimental) flow cache code in it.
[perhaps erroneously supposing that the promise of new longevity for Unix on commodity hardware as an edge packet forwarding engine is relevant to NANOG...] I heard on the FreeBSD lists that NASA is sponsoring this work. Does anybody know the desired end product? The release notes I saw seemed biased towards host stack improvements, with the flow cache a notable exception. I'd kill for a decent low-cost , high-density 10/100 ethernet traffic shaping device with functionality similar to Cisco's CAR or, dare to dream, a Packeteer. regards, -- Robert
Robert Sanders writes:
BTW, we are managing to get NetBSD to handle multiple ethernets at wire speed now that NetBSD-current has (still experimental) flow cache code in it.
[perhaps erroneously supposing that the promise of new longevity for Unix on commodity hardware as an edge packet forwarding engine is relevant to NANOG...]
I heard on the FreeBSD lists that NASA is sponsoring this work.
Nope. Matt Thomas is doing that on his own time. NASA *has* sponsored some NetBSD based work on storage systems -- their Numerical Simulation Facility apparently needs filestores much bigger than any commercial vendor can manage, and they've been using BSD boxes for them. This is really far afield of nanog, though. Perry
Hello all,
At the low end, sure. They're cheap as all hell, easy to remote manage, easy to expand, and very efficient. With the right software, they are pretty damn nice. Lots of NSPs use the things these days -- Daemon in the U.K. used to do nothing but BSD boxes last time I checked.
Indeed up until a few months ago all our core routers were OpenBSD machines, however recently we have started getting GRF's in to complement them. And its spelt Demon, as in the guy with the horns 8) Joe -- Joe Warren-Meeks Senior Systems Administrator joew@demon.net Demon Internet Ltd 0181 371 1035 http://www.demon.net
On Thu, 07 May 1998 17:36:45 -0400 "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> wrote: Bays software sucks, the ammount of hassle I've had with frame relay and ATM with Bay is a nightmare. The Ascend GRF-400 is an excellent choice.
Jon Green writes:
Wait.. a Bay BCN will push 1 Gb/s through the box,
Bay's have beautiful hardware architectures. The hardware is not the problem.
but you are recommending a PC running GateD over a Bay router?
At the low end, sure. They're cheap as all hell, easy to remote manage, easy to expand, and very efficient. With the right software, they are pretty damn nice. Lots of NSPs use the things these days -- Daemon in the U.K. used to do nothing but BSD boxes last time I checked.
Perry
-- Neil J. McRae. Alive and Kicking. neil@DOMINO.ORG NetBSD-1.3 released! ftp://ftp.uk.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD Free the daemon in your <A HREF="http://www.NetBSD.ORG/">computer!</A>
On Thu, 7 May 1998, Jon Green wrote:
Wait.. a Bay BCN will push 1 Gb/s through the box, but you are recommending a PC running GateD over a Bay router? If you are going to tell people "don't use this" a least give some reasons why to justify it.
Well I also like PC Routers over BCN. You are right a BCN can push much more data then a PC Router, but of you look at value and ease of use the PC Routers wins. When you need more bandwidth then a PC can handle then you can move to a GRF and just copy over your configs. :-)
<> Nathan Stratton Telecom & ISP Consulting www.robotics.net nathan@robotics.net
-Jon
----------------------------------------------------------------- * Jon Green * "Life's a dance * * jcgreen@netINS.net * you learn as you go" * * Finger for Geek Code/PGP * * * #include "std_disclaimer.h" * http://www.netins.net/showcase/jcgreen * -------------------------------------------------------------------------
You don't want Bay
As somebody who has a few Bay B[CL]Ns in his network along with the requisite army of Ciscos, I regretfully must concur. They had an architectural lead over Cisco until VIP2-40/50s, (d)CEF and the 12000, but they haven't been keeping up. Cisco has Bay outmatched in scalability, density, software stability, breadth of product line, modern features (CAR, policy routing, WRED, etc.), support, documentation, ease of configuration -- there are still some things you can't reasonably configure on a Bay without Site Mangler pumping SNMP into it, and unfortunately sometimes a router in a bad spot isn't easy to access via anything but its console, visibility (our net management guys seem to have a harder time dealing with Bay), and overall sleep-cycle impact. Heck, Cisco routers even look better. Nowadays there's not much reason to consider Bay other than cost, and over the long run, I believe the Bay TCO is higher. And it's a heck of a lot easier to hire somebody with relevant Cisco experience than with Bay or 3com. Don't ever underestimate that advantage. regards, -- Robert ...wondering if this message will take over a day to reach the list like his last ones.
If you'd like to build a core NSP backbone, go to the Core Store. They are located on 31337 Clue Blvd., Cluetown, DC. On Thu, 7 May 1998, Rob M VanHooren wrote:
Hi, just a quickie (respond via e-mail, I'll summarize to the list)...
Need to build a core NSP backbone.
Who's equipment do I want:
1) cisco 2) Bay 3) 3Com
Please include model, personal likes/dislikes, caveats, etc, etc...
Thanks! Bakeoff ends May 31st/98...
~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-.._..-*~ Rob M. VanHooren - Chief Plumber, +1 519 679-1155 x33 Packet Pusher, and Resident Mad Scientist(tm) Alarms to 646-4724 Network Engineering Services 171 Queens Avenue, Suite 320 Linkdata Communications Inc. London, CANADA
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Atheism is a non-prophet organization. I route, therefore I am. Alex Rubenstein, alex@nac.net, KC2BUO, ISP/C Charter Member Father of the Network and Head Bottle-Washer Net Access Corporation, 9 Mt. Pleasant Tpk., Denville, NJ 07834 Don't choose a spineless ISP! We have more backbone! http://www.nac.net -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
That *can't* be in DC because on one there has a....well never mind. On Thu, 7 May 1998, Al Reuben wrote:
If you'd like to build a core NSP backbone, go to the Core Store. They are located on 31337 Clue Blvd., Cluetown, DC.
On Thu, 7 May 1998, Rob M VanHooren wrote:
Hi, just a quickie (respond via e-mail, I'll summarize to the list)...
Need to build a core NSP backbone.
Who's equipment do I want:
On Thu, May 07, 1998 at 08:04:27PM -0400, Rob M VanHooren wrote:
On Thu, 7 May 1998, Al Reuben wrote:
If you'd like to build a core NSP backbone, go to the Core Store. They are located on 31337 Clue Blvd., Cluetown, DC.
can I get fries with that?
"I hate to tell y'all this, but he's got a job with deep-packet frying in his future." "Hi, Cluenet NOC; this is ... Bob." Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "Two words: Darth Doogie." -- Jason Colby, Tampa Bay, Florida on alt.fan.heinlein +1 813 790 7592 Managing Editor, Top Of The Key sports e-zine ------------ http://www.totk.com
participants (24)
-
Adam Rothschild -
Al Reuben -
Andrew Bangs -
Blake Willis -
Gregory Mirsky -
J.D. Falk -
Jason L. Weisberger -
Jay R. Ashworth -
Joe Warren-Meeks -
Jon Green -
Jon Lewis -
Karl Denninger -
Michael Dillon -
Michael H. Lambert -
Nathan Stratton -
Neil J. McRae -
Perry E. Metzger -
Phil Howard -
Richard Welty -
Rob M VanHooren -
Rob Skrobola -
Robert Sanders -
Scott Weeks -
Steve Sobol