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

[James Braunegg]

Dear Andrew

Based on your budget the Cisco 7200 is a very old platform and EOL but still used by many people whilst it's a hardware based router all the processing power is done in CPU not in ASIC which does have some downfalls when dealing with large packet per seconds data..... that being said the G2 NPE card has large amounts of capacity might last you many years if your traffic levels are around 1gbit.

You might even be able to start with say a NPE 300/400 if your taking less than 100mbit IP transit or a G1 card instead of the G2 and get two 7200 VXR routers instead of a single G2 and still be way under your budget which would be a very nice setup which would give you room to upgrade to a G2 in the future as they come down in price.

>From memory a G2 card is around 4k to 5k a few years ago they were about 10k...  soon I can see them even less, as long as you get the VXR chassis your upgrade path is very flexible

Kindest Regards

James Braunegg
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From: AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Andrew White
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2013 7:16 PM
To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Juniper vs Cisco vs Brocade - what's best for BGP routing?

Thanks again guys for all the feedback both off and on list. The information is great - please keep it coming!

I've gotten some details about the Cisco 7200G2s - any thoughts on these? Looks like I can get them for a song and a few people have recommended them to me. They seem to suit my needs pretty well!

Cheers :)

On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 5:30 PM, Andrew White <admin at uberskilled.com<mailto:admin at uberskilled.com>> wrote:
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<mailto: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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