...snip...
> Don't get me wrong. I'm a big fan of Juniper (I work for a Juniper
> Partner/Cisco Partner!). I'm not averse to pointing out the
> limitations of any vendor's kit if the situation warrants it and I
> understand all the benefits of the Juniper architecture. In a way,
> I'm just trying to play devil's advocate and point out the kind of
> things that Cisco might try to throw at Chris' customer. I have the
> same reservations about Cisco's 10000 as Neils and I feel that the
> 12404 is potentially even greater overkill than the M5 (in a bigger
> form factor). Both are *very* expensive.
I appreciate the devils advocate. :-) I believe the M5 is a better product
for their current needs and gives them plenty of room to grow. I severely
dislike cisco. I dont like IOS, I dont like their HW offerings, and im sure
many do but im not one of them. So yes im partly biased. I freely offer that
up :-) But I think my recommendation to them is a good one based on technical
merit alone. Considering future growth. And im happy to hear opposing views
or I wouldn't haved asked. Granted its not an unbiased list either :-)
> > The problem here basically is that your requirements are not at all
> > hefty from the looks of it, which makes several Cisco products able
> > to fill the same hole in your topology. However, none of them will
> > scale to the heights the M5 can attain. The question is more: How
> > much
> > traffic do you reckon your customer will be pushing through this
> > box before it has been written off?
>
> As Neils has pointed out, the main benefit of the M5 is it's
> scalability (you could even say that the M10 might be a better bet).
> I was just basing my comments on Chris' stated requirement for 4 T1s
> and 4 FE (he made no mention of cable operators and fiber rings in
> his first - or second - email ;-). Given his subsequent email, I'd
> have no reservations in recommending the M5/M10. The only limitation
> of the M5 being that you're limited to GE/OC12 whereas the M10/M20
> could give you OC48 (if that's a projected requirement).
And thast what I was keeping in mind. Future growth. They have a 3640 now and
it wont do a full BGP route table according to the cable office. And I was
told UUnet configured it for them. I know the 3660 will do a full route
table. But rather then quible about it I said ok if were going to redo this
entire network anyway lets do things right. We will get a router that does
your current incoming 4 T's, has 4 FE ports that can be bonded if you *need*
to for aggregate lan connectivity, and leaves you room to hook your fiber
ring into to do you VoIP, video offering's whatever you can think of. And if
in a year they for some reason outgrow the port density of the M5 I think
they can sell it off for a good part of what they paid for it. But I cant see
them outgrowing it any time soon. As far as OC12 vs OC48, im not really sure
what kind of requirement would be needed for doing audio/video for a town of
8,000. I've never had any part to play in that kind of service on that kind
of scale. The first year of this new network will just be cleaning it up from
the previous cluebie admins total mess anyway. Getting stable service to
customers, and increasing performance for customers. Then they can think of
deploying value added services like VoIP, video, etc..
I want to thank everyone for the input though. This ia a good list and lot's
of good suggestions have been made so far. I really appreciate it!
Chris
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Aug 05 2002 - 10:42:38 EDT