Core router bakeoff?

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1

Arnaud Girsch 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.

Just out of curiosity ...
Why not considering the 4th vendor, Cabletron, for this kind of equipment,
before using PCs.

PCs are cheap and I know them well. I wasn't aware Cabletron even had
a box with a BGP-4 implementation in it.

They just released some announcement that major companies and campuses are
using their equipment for new backbones.

That sounds like salesspeak. I've used lots of cabletron hubs and such
over the years, but they never seemed to have real routers.

Perry

2

Arnaud Girsch 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.
>
> Just out of curiosity ...
> Why not considering the 4th vendor, Cabletron, for this kind of equipment,
> before using PCs.

PCs are cheap and I know them well. I wasn't aware Cabletron even had
a box with a BGP-4 implementation in it.

PCs are also designed with a mindset that saving $.10 on a component saves
millions, encouraging overly cheap designs. Considering the typical PC
customer has no problem with rebooting their machine several times a day,
that gives them plenty of room to cut corners without pissing off their
primary client base. This is not to say that you can't build solid hardware,
but the typical PC vendors simply do not have a level of quality sufficient
for 24x7 operation.

"Cheap" often winds up "expensive" when you count the cost of downtime. We
run all Cisco routers and have had exactly one failure on any box in 4 years
(a power supply in a 4500). While the software quality has gotten worse
lately and you have to be careful selecting which code to run, the software
has generally been as stable as the hardware.

> They just released some announcement that major companies and campuses are
> using their equipment for new backbones.

That sounds like salesspeak. I've used lots of cabletron hubs and such
over the years, but they never seemed to have real routers.

As far as I know, Cabletron's router blades for their switches are just
Cisco 4500's with one of the NPM slots tied to the backplane. I assume you
could run BGP on it, although performance might not be good enough.

John Tamplin Traveller Information Services
jat@Traveller.COM 2104 West Ferry Way
205/883-4233x7007 Huntsville, AL 35801

3

Given that Cisco built their routers for them, and then they pissed off
Cisco to the point where they didn't renew there code license for IOS in
there hubs because of their anti Cisco marketing campaign.

Cabletron has a bad rap with consultants. Don't ever try to partner with
them and walk them in someplace. They are the borg, you will be assimilated.

Now that I ragged on em, they do have solid stuff. I have one client who
has had their MMAC hubs up and running for about 8 years with narry a
hiccup. And these are in rotten basements.

If you can get past their attitude....

Eric

4

Vendors are only good as their reps. Our CableTron rep. is excellent in
technical evaluation, and esp. in follow through. Yes, we use CISCO on
our edge routers, but our rep. has just been replaced due to his lack of
follow through.

:slight_smile: neil

5

> > Why not considering the 4th vendor, Cabletron, for this kind of equipment,
> > before using PCs.
>
> PCs are cheap and I know them well. I wasn't aware Cabletron even had
> a box with a BGP-4 implementation in it.

PCs are also designed with a mindset that saving $.10 on a component saves
millions, encouraging overly cheap designs. Considering the typical PC
customer has no problem with rebooting their machine several times a day,
that gives them plenty of room to cut corners without pissing off their
primary client base. This is not to say that you can't build solid hardware,
but the typical PC vendors simply do not have a level of quality sufficient
for 24x7 operation.

I'll speak to that. He didn't say precisely what I think he meant, so
I'll say it: it's not all that hard to build PC-class equipment for
mission critical standards. A vast majority of the voice
mail/automated attendant systems out there nowadays are "PC" gear...
which does _not_ mean J. Random Compaq...

IMS, WTI and half a dozen other vendors sell gear that ought to be
perfectly rugged enough for this, and remember: if the gear costs a
tenth what it's commercial competition costs, your redundancy is a hot
spare in the next rack, and move a couple cables.

"Cheap" often winds up "expensive" when you count the cost of downtime. We
run all Cisco routers and have had exactly one failure on any box in 4 years
(a power supply in a 4500). While the software quality has gotten worse
lately and you have to be careful selecting which code to run, the software
has generally been as stable as the hardware.

Can you get the source from Cisco? :wink:

As far as I know, Cabletron's router blades for their switches are just
Cisco 4500's with one of the NPM slots tied to the backplane. I assume you
could run BGP on it, although performance might not be good enough.

There was a buyout?

John Tamplin Traveller Information Services

Damn, sorry; didn't even look. If you take anything I said too
harshly, change your mind. :slight_smile:

Cheers,
-- jra

6

PCs are also designed with a mindset that saving $.10 on a component saves
millions, encouraging overly cheap designs. Considering the typical PC
customer has no problem with rebooting their machine several times a day,
that gives them plenty of room to cut corners without pissing off their
primary client base. This is not to say that you can't build solid hardware,
but the typical PC vendors simply do not have a level of quality sufficient
for 24x7 operation.

I doubt that anyone was suggesting building your backbone out of
closeout specials from CompUSA.

If you're reasonably careful in choosing and assembling your PC
hardware, particularly in your choise of power supply and cooling, and
run one of the mature BSDs on them, it's not hard to get 24x7
reliability. I have a bunch of BSDI boxes here doing everything from
routing to DNS to web CGIs to X animations (often all on the same PC)
and the number of crashes is down below one per year. If I rack
mounted them and put them in a climate controlled environment rather
than my spare bedroom, they'd do even better. As someone else noted,
for what they cost you can get two of everything for hot sparing.
There are vendors that specialize in BSD PCs who can put together
systems like this for you.

Even on cheapo PC hardware, the vast majority of the crashes using
system software from suburban Seattle are due to software bugs, not
hardware problems. My former main server which was rock solid under
BSDI crashes daily with Windows 98.

7

Arnaud Girsch writes:

Why not considering the 4th vendor, Cabletron, for this kind of equipment,
before using PCs.

PCs are cheap and I know them well. I wasn't aware Cabletron even had
a box with a BGP-4 implementation in it.

they just bought Yago, who were developing an ASIC based "big honking
router". it's just hit beta. if i were staying at INet Solutions (today is
my last day at the old shop) i'd have an evalution/beta unit in here right
now. they're still working on the various and sundry port cards; the
original version didn't have a lot of the WAN cards it needed to be a
really useful backbone piece.

That sounds like salesspeak. I've used lots of cabletron hubs and such
over the years, but they never seemed to have real routers.

but the smartswitch 2200 runs RIPv1... and according to cabletron's press
release, it does "level 4 switching"...

cheers,
  richard

8

it was the 4700, and it is my understanding that the agreement between
cabletron and cisco fell through, so the 4700 blades are all sitting
around, and cabletron can't legally sell them.

richard