[AusNOG] 10Gb Switching - Cheap but good

Sat May 30 16:34:16 EST 2015

Agreed on QFSP+ these days, it's not a second mortgage to buy supporting hardware :) we've been seeing a bit of that kit going out the door lately

Josh Tipping
Chief Technical Officer | iCITA
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On 30 May 2015, at 2:47 pm, Russell Brenner <rbrenner at Brocade.com<mailto:rbrenner at Brocade.com>> wrote:

MGBASE-T probably doesn’t arouse a lot of fun in the DC, since it was led by the Open Industry Alliance and the IEEE for the purposes of wireless.

10GBASE-T is pretty nasty in terms of power consumption, so the MGBASE-T will provide a few other lower power options (as well as EEE for 10GBASE-T).

There are presently no options for 802.11ac wave 2 when it hits the market, since 10GBASE-T + PoE+ would require an enormous amount of power and subsequent cooling, not something that bodes well with enterprise comms environments.

And FWIW, QSFP Twinax is pretty inexpensive these days, I mean, it’s not cheap, but it’s not ridiculous, so maybe your lab dreams are just around the corner Skeeve. We’ve plenty of customers that have it running in smaller environments and labs.

On 30 May 2015, at 2:12 pm, Skeeve Stevens <skeeve+ausnog at eintellegonetworks.com<mailto:skeeve+ausnog at eintellegonetworks.com>> wrote:

There is a lot going on in switching.

NBase-T is curious.. 2.5Ge and 5Ge but I'm not sure that it will get much uptake... it's cost justification over 10Gbase-T isn't much, and what you get for it isn't much.  The speed demands will exceed the 2.5Ge and 5Ge too quickly (in my opinion) and 10GBase-T can do 55m on Cat6 and 100 on Cat6a...  You just get a small advantage with 2.5/5 on Cat5e.

Though, with Cisco doing it... you never know: http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/solutions/collateral/enterprise-networks/catalyst-multigigabit-switching/multigigabit-ethernet-technology.pdf - But honestly, right now I don't see Cisco an innovator in the switching space.

There are some new switches arriving that are mind-blowing.

I'd love to play with the Dell's Z9100-ON. Check out: http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/shared-content/data-sheets/en/Documents/Dell-Networking-Z9100-spec-sheet.pdf

and video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiGqRy5zgCM

Multi-rate... 10Ge, 25Ge, 40Ge, 50Ge, 100Ge on the same ports using different optics - with flexible operating systems... Cumulus and Pica8 I hope.

Each port can be split into 4 x 10Ge/25Ge... 128 x 25Ge per 1RU chassis.  Talk about mother of all density.

I've been working on the Arista 7050QX and building lots of 80Ge port-channels... loving the speed and the new amazing features... just not how slow vendors are in releasing some specific features... but Arista is still ahead of the pack compared to some others.

So John...  maybe yeah.. 2 x 40Ge QSFP+ for small Lab testing... that would be nice :)

...Skeeve

Skeeve Stevens - Founder & Chief Network Architect
eintellego Networks Pty Ltd
Email: skeeve at eintellegonetworks.com<https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=skeeve@eintellegonetworks.com>
Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; Skype: skeeve
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On Sat, May 30, 2015 at 1:34 PM, John Edwards <jaedwards at gmail.com<https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=jaedwards@gmail.com>> wrote:
Also worth a mention are the NBASE-T switches arriving at an industry near you this year.

While I doubt anyone on this list has a real need for 2.5G copper ports, having this feature available will change the economics of 10G aggregation switches as they wont just be in the core/datacentre any more.

I also expect that Skeeve will be asking the same question about a switch with 2x 40G ports this time next year :)

John

Sent from my iPhone

On 30 May 2015, at 10:15 am, Josh Tipping <josh.tipping at icita.com<https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=josh.tipping@icita.com>> wrote:

(Distributor bias!)

Huawei S5700-28X-LI is a good option. 24x1G and 4x10G SFP+. Sell to the channel for well under $1.5k and do everything you're after. I likely have demo stock of one too if you'd like to give one a try, let me know offlist.

Cheers,
Josh Tipping

On 30 May 2015, at 8:05 am, Skeeve Stevens <skeeve+ausnog at eintellegonetworks.com<https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=skeeve+ausnog@eintellegonetworks.com>> wrote:

Hey all,

Was doing some lab testing and needed some cheap 10Gb SFP+ ports - so used the Mikrotik CRS210-8G-2S+IN.

What a piece of junk. The OS isn't too bad but the switch hardware can't even keep its 10Gb ports up for very long without dying with little errors. What do you expect for $300 right?

So, I am looking for a stable 10Gb (SFP+) solution... 2 ports, preferably 4 SFP+, with a stable OS that can move VLANs around simply with trunks and VLAN access supported. I don't need much super fancy, but a 1RU form factor with rack mounting would be nice. A selection of 1Gb copper ports obviously. Remote ssh (or telnet if I have to) would be appreciated - not GUI please.

I think 1k-ish would be reasonable... I don't need Cisco or Juniper...

Recommendations?

...Skeeve

Skeeve Stevens - Founder & Chief Network Architect
eintellego Networks Pty Ltd
Email: skeeve at eintellegonetworks.com<https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=skeeve@eintellegonetworks.com>
Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 ; Skype: skeeve
LinkedIn: /in/skeeve<http://linkedin.com/in/skeeve> ; Expert360: Profile<https://expert360.com/profile/d54a9>

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