[f-nsp] Is there much to recommend an MLX?

[Andreas Larsen]

I come from a very cisco centric company before a I switched to the current
company. We ran alot of 6500 and 7600. With 7600/7200 in MPLS core.  I had
no trouble what so ever moving to XMR/MLX foundry the CLI is "industry"
standard etc. The only big differance I seen is the upgrade procedure of the
cards etc. Since the MLX/XMR is based on FPG you actually have to upgrade
all the cards each time you upgrade the software on the switch. Once you get
the hang of it it's not that hard but alot of information to keep in mind
when you do the upgrade.

I'm not sure about the price on the 7600/6500 but the platform itself feels
really old and I wonder how long cisco will continue to support it ? Will
there be a new architecture ? The foundry platform is 2 years now and it
will be ready for 100G per blade. That is something you have to consider
when installing gear for the future also.


If I had unlimited ammount of money I would go for the Cisco Solution. But
if I had to make a conscious choice and with your home economy I would
definitely go with Foundry.

Regards Andreas

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 9:38 AM, Tomasz Szewczyk <tomeks at man.poznan.pl>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> In my opinion the 6500 are targeted to big LANs and/or corporate networks.
> All the features and modules available on this platform cans be used in such
> networks. In our case we have quite old 6500 (Sup720) in metro network (pure
> L2 switching). The XMRs we have in WAN (country wide). We have MPLS running
> on XMRs.
> Some time ago Cisco made some changes to MPLS implementation, but I didn't
> test it. However, I think the 6500/7600 has major conceptual (hardware)
> limitations - New features requires module replacement (Supervisor and/or
> line cards).
> The MLX/XMR platform is good for ISPs. At the moment the software is not so
> advanced as JunOS, but new features simply comes with software (FPGA)
> updates. The platform is more flexible - Foundry assured us that it is even
> 100Gbps ready.
> So - if you need "feature-rich" platform for corporate network and you are
> Cisco centric - it would be easier for you to buy 6500, but if you're
> looking for efficient and flexible routing/switching platform Foundry will
> be good for you.
>
>  From what someone told me I gather the XMR/MLX is more of a router than a
>> layer3 switch (like the 6500/7600)
>>
>>  Yes indeed - on XMR/MLS you don't have to enable L2 switching. However it
> uses virtual interface to make IP subinterfaces.
>
>>
>> Essentially what i'm after is just someone who has had good exposure to
>> both vendors and can give me an honest non biased opinion on what they like
>> and dislike about the XMR/MLX's compared to the Cisco offerings.
>>
>>  My summary is - Cisco for corporate LAN and XMR/MLX for WAN/ISP networks.
>
> Best Regards
>
> Tomek
>
>  Cheers
>>
>> Ben
>>
>> *From:* foundry-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net [mailto:
>> foundry-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net] *On Behalf Of *Jason Evans
>> *Sent:* Friday, 5 December 2008 1:30 AM
>> *To:* Dan Pinkard
>> *Cc:* foundry-nsp at puck.nether.net
>> *Subject:* Re: [f-nsp] Is there much to recommend an MLX?
>>
>> We have 8 in XMR's in production at this point, some running hundreds of
>> BGP sessions, and our pain has been minimal. There was a pretty bad software
>> bug that caused us to send full tables to peers so we were tripping
>> max-prefixes, but it was addressed. I think we've had 1 line card fail in
>> the past 6 months, so not bad.
>>
>> I would definitely recommend the XMR for its price/performance point.
>> However, be very careful with what you try to do with a SuperX :-). Don't
>> mix SuperX with BGP if you can help it.
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 2:41 PM, Dan Pinkard <DPinkard at accessline.com<mailto:
>> DPinkard at accessline.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Time and time again I've gotten anecdotal recommendations that Foundry
>> should only be used for layer 2. I would like to open that up to a wider
>> audience with a perhaps more directed question:
>>
>> What is there about the MLX platform that helps it compare to the
>> available offerings from Juniper/Cisco/etc? Why did you end up with that
>> gear other than just price? With the same options available, would you buy
>> it again?
>>
>> (Please avoid the flamable aspects of that conversation)
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