[c-nsp] New Joiner - ME3600X and tools

[Jason Lixfeld]

We've deployed about 20 of these so far, and for a first release, they are solid.  They have taken some of the flexible Ethernet service features from the 7600 ES series line cards and put a distilled feature set onto these boxes.  Makes life so much easier.

- The biggest issue we've had with the FCS code is that you can't have more than one port be a member of one bridge domain.  This will be fixed in FCS+1 which, I believe, is due any second now.
- We also ran into a weird BGP issue on 12.2(52)EY where prefixes sourced on the ME weren't being announced via the update-group and the correct extended communities weren't being applied.  This has only happened to us once on a box that we forgot to upgrade to EY1.
- There is no way to fix a corrupted IOS.  The restore procedure hasn't been published internally at Cisco yet (at least not that my TAC engineer could find) so if you brick the box, you have no choice but to get it RMAd for the time being.
- Make sure your NMS doesn't poll .1.3.6.1.2.1.17.4.3.1.1.  You'll crash the box, immediately :)

Other than that, I can't think of anything irksome.

We went through the vendor gambit on these before we bought them.  Cisco, Juniper, MRV, Alcatel, I'm sure there were a few others that I'm forgetting.  The only real competition after the dust settled was Juniper and we opted out of that mainly because the boxes have a ridiculously deep footprint and as much as I love JunOS, their stuff just requires too damn much work to get going.  Create a CCC, create bi-directional LSPs, map the LSP to the CCC, map the CCC to the interface, blah, blah, blah.  Cisco's solution is 1 line of three 3 commands per interface:  xconnect <destination_loopback> <vcid>.  Done.  Everything else is done under the hood.  Easy botton?  #winning.  There's no need for things to be as complex as J tends to make them.  There is certainly a time and a place for that many knobs, but not on the edge.  No way.   Also, I've heard no end of hassles from a bunch of folks who run these boxes.

On 2011-03-28, at 5:17 PM, Leigh Harrison wrote:

> Thanks for the feedback, and yeah, I agree that a lack of IPv6 support is slack.  We're seeing a keen interest from various customers at the moment.
> 
> Has anyone got any happy stories about the ME3600X?!??
> 
> LH
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net [mailto:cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Vinny_Abello at Dell.com
> Sent: 28 March 2011 22:00
> To: lists at hojmark.org; jon at bovre.no
> Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
> Subject: Re: [c-nsp] New Joiner - ME3600X and tools
> 
> Back in November when I questioned our Cisco account rep while I was purchasing a half dozen of these, I was told ~summer of '11 for IPv6 on the ME3600X... I'm sure that's been pushed back based on newer feedback it seems people are getting. This is most unfortunate. I don't understand how Cisco can ignore IPv6 on newer products like this. It is indeed totally unacceptable and does make these L2 only having to rely on something else to do IPv6 in L3 the access layer. :(
> 
> -Vinny
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net
> [mailto:cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Asbjorn Hojmark - Lists
> Sent: Monday, March 28, 2011 3:36 PM
> To: 'Jon Harald Bøvre'
> Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
> Subject: Re: [c-nsp] New Joiner - ME3600X and tools
> 
>> IPv6 supported? No. Probably coming in october this year.
> 
> Last I heard was 'sometime 2012' for IPv6 support -- Totally unacceptable for any device doing L3 in SP environments, IMO -- so I consider it a L2-only box. 
> 
> -A
> 
> _______________________________________________
> cisco-nsp mailing list  cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp
> archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> cisco-nsp mailing list  cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp
> archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/