[AusNOG] Juniper vs Cisco vs Brocade - what's best for BGP routing?

[Andrew White]

Hey guys,

Wow, thanks for all the replies - both on and off list. There's some
fantastic ones here and some great information.

To answer some of the questions:

My budget is somewhere in the $5-15k range. I can go higher, but I'm not
super comfortable doing so unless there's a good ROI reason to do so.
Obviously bang for buck is important, as I'm not a huge business.

In house support is a good point. I do have a CCNA and have a reasonable
network topology and interconnectivity understanding - I'd imagine anything
(as long as it has documentation) I can learn and support over time.

Throughput is only about 150mbit bursing to 200mbit currently, but
expansion is definitely planned and future proofing is wanted.

I'm not sure about picking how many interfaces I need. I guess a couple for
upstream, a couple for future upstreams, and maybe 4-6 for back into the
network (for future proofing, I have 2 internal core routers currently).

There's been a few suggestions of a physical Linux box or Linux VM. What
would be the advantages/disadvantages of this compared to routing hardware?

Thanks guys, I really appreciate the great responses!

Andrew


On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 4:46 PM, Andrew White <admin at uberskilled.com> wrote:

> Hey guys,
>
> I've recently set up my own AS and I'm looking at broadcasting my own BGP.
> I'm wanting to find some decent hardware at a reasonable price to do so.
>
> The same router will also run my servers (about 50 VMs/3 physical boxes)
> and have to deal with multiple upstream providers (two currently, but more
> to come at my DC).
>
> I also want something that can hold a big BGP routing table.
>
> When I was first getting into networking, Cisco was "the big thing". Now I
> look at the market and Junipers seem really common for the cheaper end of
> the market. I've seen Brocades too - I think they may be out of my price
> range, but I'm not sure if they're worth the money or if there's a huge
> benefit.
>
> I've been tossing up over a few Huawei models which are really, really
> cheap!
>
> I don't know a ton about the hardware side of things and I'm sure there
> are others on the list with a similar level of knowledge to me. I'm happy
> for any vendor contacts, and I'm sure replies on list would be appreciated
> for other people to learn about this too!
>
> Thanks guys!
>
> Andrew
>
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