[AusNOG] Experiences with PPPoE on MX5 or ASR1K

[Tony Wicks]

My 2c

PPPoE is largely a function carried out in CPU. The ASR is a "big CPU" based
box, hence it is best suited for this function. The MX80 is largely a
hardware/ASIC based box, as such it is best suited for wire speed routing,
not so much CPU functions. An MX5 is just a software limited MX80, you don't
get any more CPU capacity with an 80 over a 5. 

So... Use the MX for your big routing tables, and the ASR for your BNG
functions. If you want a cheap but effective PPPoE box, use Mikrotiks

cheers



-----Original Message-----
From: AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Scott
O'Brien
Sent: Friday, 19 September 2014 4:27 p.m.
To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: [AusNOG] Experiences with PPPoE on MX5 or ASR1K

G'Day all,

I'm often lurking on list but don't often post.  I'm building a little setup
soon for a small ISP overseas and am hoping to get opinions in peoples
experience running a PPPoE server on either the MX5 or Cisco ASR1001-X
routers.  I know that Juniper have had issues with PPPoE in the past with
this platform but I believe that's all sorted now?  I can't seem to find
much by the way of how many subscribers can be terminated on these platforms
in spec sheets when traffic shaping would be being used on each session.
Would I be a little optimistic expecting upwards of 4K users on either of
these boxes?

Before I start a war of not using PPPoE because straight IPoE is better and
being used more and more, I was thinking it'd be much easier for a small
scale shop to support this by simply extending a L2 domain for their
customers (with appropriate L2 security) than having to worry about where to
place route-points to get meaningful information in DHCP option 82 relays.

Hoping that someone who works a bit more with Juniper and this platform
could answer if I'd be able to run a PPPoE server on the MX5 instead of
forking out for the MX80 (not needing the interfaces or bandwidth )?  It
looks like the licences (S-MX80-SA-FP, S-MX80-SSM-FP from
https://www.juniper.net/techpubs/en_US/junos13.2/topics/reference/general/mx
-series-software-license-features.html) only lists the MX80 as the supported
device?

I'm also wondering what peoples experiences are running either of these
platforms on the border regarding receiving the full routing table possibly
from a few different upstream providers.  I believe both these boxes can
handle ~ 1.5 million routes?

I've not done much either by the way of hunting for distributors (either
local or in the US) to start getting an idea on pricing yet.  Is this
something this list could possibly help out with?  I know the charter says
it's for exchanging technical information, so perhaps content regarding
distributor contacts would be better suited to contact me off-list?

Thanks,
- Scott O'Brien
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