[c-nsp] Recommendation for Cisco router with Full BGP Route

[Gert Doering]

Hi,

On Tue, Mar 04, 2025 at 08:08:50PM +0000, Drew Weaver via cisco-nsp wrote:
> [ASR990x]
> I don't believe the 9902 uses a proprietary algo to achieve its maximum route scale.

As in "nobody knows how the ASR9k does anything, but they at least do not
*state* 'it's proprietary'"?

> Downsides of the Arista DCS-7280CR2K-30
> 
> Sflow only

The 7280R2 is the old model - for a more fair comparison, have a look
at the 7280R3K series.  Which, incidentially, has netflow :-)

(Though in the end the difference is small... the ASR9k has netflow, but
the caches are too small, and it lacks "MAC address in netflow" support - the
R3K does SFlow with MAC addresses, which is really really nice to understand
your IXP traffic)

> The OS doesn't seem to know whether or not it has written files to the filesystem when you save a running config or copy a new software image.
> The OS doesn't seem to track whether the disk is still working or not. 

Not sure I understand that... unless you like to surprise-power-off your
devices, why is that relevant?  We have never lost files on either XR or
EOS, and both do have a real file system...

> Upsides:
> 
> 30 ports of 100GE that can break out however we want
> If you like EOS
> As far as I know there is no phone home or licensing restrictions
> I'm not sure on current pricing but these weren???t as expensive as an ASR9902 and you get 22 extra ports.

Arista pricing is not cheap, but you get a box that is built to do what
you want - "do routing things".  Not "half the engineering team works
on licensing schemes" - yes, you need to formally buy some licenses to
be allowed to use some of the features (I forgot what the 7280R needs,
might be "for full route scale" you need something).  The big difference
is: the Arista license is reflected on the invoice you get, and A-TAC
likely knows about it.  But there are no licenses servers, no PAK, no
online license checks, no code in the router to every worry about 
licenses.  No engineering time wasted on licensing bullshit.

Plus, world-class TAC support.  Like, really.  I've spent too much time
on bug reports with various vendor TACs, and Arista never ceases to 
surprise me.  Like, "mmmh, this is an interesting problem you have,
let me investigate this... yeah, you found a bug... here's a workaround,
bugfix will come in one of the next releases".  Compare that to the
usual response from Cisco these days...

gert

-- 
"If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you 
 feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted 
 it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor."
                             Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Gert Doering - Munich, Germany                             gert at greenie.muc.de
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