Let me preface this by saying that I'm not a full time network admin, but we're a small company and I'm the only one handling this. Our budget is also not huge, but we're at the point where extended downtime would cost us enough money that we can spend some money to fix the problem.
Here's my situation: I have two providers, each handing me gigabit ethernet. I'm getting full BGP feeds and handling them with a Linux/Quagga router. We max out at about 100kpps, as we're mostly pushing video which gives us a large packet size. It works fine, and I've been happy with it so far. But, we've gotten to the point where I want a backup router of some sort in case something happens to that one, what with the fans and disks that could fail. I see a few options.
1. Just set up another Quagga box and use keepalived or some other HA solution.
2. Buy a Cisco/Juniper/whatever and then have the Quagga box as backup.
3. I have a 6500 behind the router that's just doing switching. Could I have something switch that to static route all traffic to one of my providers if something happened to the router? The 6500 has Sup1A with MSFC2 running IOS native.
On the Cisco side, I see that we could probably run a 7200VXR with NPE-G1 (about $6000 on ebay). Moving to the Sup720, even used is probably out of our price range.
What do you guys think I should use here?
Thanks,
Alex
If you want to keep it cheap, roll out another Quagga edge - one to each
peer. Drop default into OSPF from both edges, iBGP over a GE between them.
If one toasts you'll only lose half your routes for 1s-ish, or however long
you set your OSPF keepalives.
While you're at it, add extra fans and run the edge systems off solid state
disks or CF cards.
Or, buy $real hardware.
-Jack Carrozzo
If you were to upgrade the 6500 to a Sup720-3bxl or better, it would be a far superior platform for handling multiple gigabit ethernet circuits and full BGP than the NPE-G1. Sadly, the sup720 and required power supply and fan card upgrades would cost more than that 7200/NPE-G1, but it'll route considerably more traffic. I don't think you're going to get line-rate GigE from the G1. You will with the 6500.
I have to say that this looks like a nice solution to me, and I've definitely had many people point me to OSPF. One problem is that I've never run OSPF before. Some googling brings of a few results on implementation, but can someone recommend a good place to look or a book to get to really get it all figured out?
Thanks,
Alex
OPSF (in this scenario) is easier to set up then BGP...but check out
http://www.openmaniak.com/quagga.php.
http://ws.afnog.org/afnog2009/sie/detail.html
monday afternoon and tuesdays workshop materials cover introduction to
dynamic routing and ospf. thursdays includes the ospf/ibgp intergration
materials.