[c-nsp] Brocade Vs Cisco

[McDonald Richards]

We run a mix of Cisco and Brocade (Foundry). The CES/CER2000 units have
proven to be incredibly high performing and reliable as an MPLS L2VPN PE
device. If we need to offer IP services we haul it via a VLL back to a Cisco
ASR1000 located at a central POP (high performance IP services but expensive
forwarding so not suitable for transport) for termination.

There have been issues inter-oping MPLS L2VPN with the Cisco gear (in our
deployment) so I'd stick to a single vendor for your PE device and try to
avoid using LDP at all on the CES/CER platform as it does not scale as well
and performs poorly compared with RSVP.

When it comes to price vs performance, the CES has been pretty hard to beat
and we looked at a LOT of other vendors.

As for their IP capabilities, since we only run these with infrastructure
routes (ISIS) and terminate VLLs, I can't give you any feedback on how they
perform as an IP edge.

McDonald



On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 11:45 PM, Bradley Williamson
<bwilliamson at eatel.com>wrote:

> Does anyone have any horror stories or gotcha's  concerning Brocade? What
> about success stories?
>
> We are looking at Brocade, Cisco, and Juniper for a couple of upcoming
> projects and I am familiar with both Cisco and Juniper, but not so much with
> Brocade. We have a few of their small switches in our network, but that’s
> about the extent of my experience.
>
> We want to build an MPLS core capable of delivering triple-play services
> and as part of that, we will be building our a MetroE network to provide
> ethernet backhaul for mobile providers and also deliver L2VPN and L3VPN
> services to our business customers.
>
> I am a little skeptical of Brocade. I just do not understand how they can
> provide the performance they claim at half the price of the other guys.
>
> Any insight/advice would be appreciated.
>
> Brad
>
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