Small full BGP table capable router with low power consumption

Hi,

I'm looking for suggestions on 1U-2U sized router with 1G interface

which can handle both IPv4 and IPv6 full BGP table and doesn't consume

too much power.

The router needs to be squeezed in to a rack which doesn't

have a lot of space nor power. As for space, maybe I can make

space for 3U or 4U but as for power, I can only do around

1.5A@100V on average. (There is room for burst power usage.)

The following are the one's I can think of:

- Juniper M7i with C-FEB-E (base 1.59A)

- Brocade CER2024F (1.35A)

- Mikrotik CCR, UBNT EdgeRouter Pro/Infinity

- A server with Vyos, vMX or ASR1000v

Does anyone have other recommendations?

Thanks,

Adam

The Edgerouter Pro 8 meets all your specs. It's 1U, has eight GigE ports, including two SFP/combo ports, can take full IPv4 and IPv6 tables, and only consumes 40 watts (about half an amp at 120V). About $300.

https://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/edgerouter-pro/

-mel beckman

A Cisco 2911 or 3945 does this though the 3945 is a little more power
hungry.

A current generation x86 server running Linux and Quagga does this.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

Watch the memory requirements on a full Internet table in the Cisco 2900 series. More current model would be the Cisco 4300 - 4400 ISR series. They have 2/4/8/16 gigs of memory. Power consumption MAX ranges from 0.6A to 3.0A depending on model. Higher models have more throughput and more interfaces. Throughput ranges from 35 mbps to 2 gbps. I rarely see Cisco routers running near the max power rating especially if you are not using PoE or etherswitch interfaces. The 43xx series is replacing the 29xx series and the 44xx series is replacing the 39xx series. I've put in a few of them and they are pretty nice. They are either 1 or 2 U in size.

We are using 4431 with throughput license to 1 GB receiving a full table from the provider and three IBGP peers with no issues and full gig throughput. It is currently drawing 65 watts of power in steady state and 250 watts on bootup (not using any PoE or network modules, just built in Ethernets).

Steven Naslund
Chicago IL

Hey Adam,

Review also:

Nokia IXR-R6 (not IXR-6)
Huawei NE20E-S2E

FWIW ...

OpenBSD on a lanner appliance with openbgpd will chew 1G. Especially on the latest version - 6.2.

Debian on the same lanner running bird would also chew that as well.

MX150?

FWIW ...

OpenBSD on a lanner appliance with openbgpd will chew 1G. Especially on the latest version - 6.2.

Debian on the same lanner running bird would also chew that as well.

It is worth mentioning for those who have not seen a Ubiquiti "edgrouter"
in person yet, or worked with one, where their operating system came
from... When Vyatta was acquired by Brocade, the core Vyatta team jumped
ship and were hired directly by Ubiquiti. When you SSH into one of these
whether it's a $45 Edgerouter-X or a $300 unit, it is a Debian based CLI
and is very obviously a fork of Vyatta. The entire system file tree and
package mangement system is all Debian.

For me the obvious answer for the OP is the Mikrotik CCR range - https://mikrotik.com/product/CCR1036-8G-2Splus

Bad thing about the CCRs is that their BGP process is single threaded. So even though it has a bunch of cores, it doesn’t utilize them for BGP.

-Mike

Is that actually still true nowadays ? Of course there is always the option of running RouterOS on an X86 for an effective solution as well.

Unfortunately, yes. Thats why two Juniper M7is just arrived on my doorstep yesterday...

Not really. There were two developers that quit Vyatta and subsequently went to Ubiquiti. And that happened long before the Brocade acquisition. The core Vyatta team is still going strong, working on the Vyatta NOS.

-robert

I understand that most BGP implementations are single-threaded.

The problem is that it sucks, which version 7 fixes... whenever the unicorn makes that delivery.

I'm replacing an M10i with a CHR.

I hope you have a newer RE so that you don't have worse BGP convergence than a CCR.

What hardware you running the CHR on?

Yea, as much as I love Juniper Hardware the M series is really a long way on the past at this point. I would suggest the new MX150 is the way to go for up to 20G requirements. Of course that's in a different league from the OP's criteria.

It's a couple year old Xeon running vSphere.

Once I get some other migrations done, I'll load either vSphere or Proxmox onto the hardware running the Vyatta firewall now and run a CHR there as well for a second upstream. I'm not yet sure what the underlying hardware is for that one.

My x86 ROS boxes load full tables in ~30 seconds and maintain hardly any CPU core usage when pulling in updates.

I've seen CCRs take 10 minutes to receive and then change routing accordingly for BGP updates (Cogent, HE and several IX peers).

Hi,

Thanks for all the replies.

I think the options that came up are:
- Mikrotiks
This fits my requirements pretty nicely, however as Mike pointed out the
single threaded BGP is a bit of concern. Also, just that I'm not a very big
fan of the /xxx Mikrotik CLI.

- EdgeRouter Pros, Juniper M7i
- A server with bgpd running
- Cisco 4300-4400 series
Both the above would work nicely.

- Cisco 2900s
Can these handle full BGP tables as of today?

- Juniper MXs
The reason I wrote M7i instead of the MX was I far as I looked on the Juniper
site, it seems to use more power than the M7i (though you get more performance).

- Nokia IXR-R6 (not IXR-6)
- Huawei NE20E-S2E
I need to look these up. I'm guessing the Nokia has same CLIs as Alcatels.

Thanks,
Adam

Well, yeah. That's where the "lots of slow cores" model doesn't work.

~Seth