[f-nsp] NetIron MLX-4 vs Juniper MX240

[Scott T. Cameron]

(forgot to copy back the list)

Thanks, this is really helpful.  I do appreciate the cost difference.  We do
have some "credits", so to speak, due to our early adoption of the SRX
series.

Some of the routing engine tasks done on the SRX series are really, really
slow. I have my SRX series taking a full route table from my upstream
providers today on BGP.  This process can take about 5 minutes to complete.
 Obviously, this is insane.

How fast are the Juniper MX series at taking / injecting routes?  How is the
failover convergence?

For the CLI, I'm not sure that I like JunOS better than the IOS clone.  My
former career was entirely Cisco, so the IOS clone is like an old, familiar
friend for me. I have more or less gotten over the learning curve with
JunOS, though.  And I do like it is a familiar FreeBSD system underneath,
even allowing you to go in to a shell.

There's a site I found, which I suspect is likely to be a bit of a Cisco
talking point, but interesting nonetheless:

http://bradreese.com/cisco-vs-competitor.htm

Some of their "studies" show that the MX-series routers have some trouble
during failover.  I am taking it with a grain of salt, just curious of
anyone has had those experiences.

On the MLX side of things.  With a rather large Foundry switching
environment, I and my team are very comfortable on that platform.  The
switches just work, and the strangest problem I have seen interop problems
with a Cisco -- and I blame Cisco for that.  We have had some struggles
using the Foundry ServerIron due to a few bugs here and there.  I do,
however, expect that a full layer3 stack is significantly less complicated
of code than what the ServerIron is able to do, so should have less bugs.

They are marketing the dual management modules as ISSU-capable.  There is a
cost difference, but it's not even 25% for our config.

Last but not least, support.  Both vendors have terrible technical support
when you have a bug, in my experience.  I loathe having to open a case.  Is
it different for support on the router series?

Thanks for all the wisdom, much appreciated.

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 12:46 AM, David Ball <davidtball at gmail.com> wrote:

>  I eval'd the XMR-4 for a couple of months (same as an MLX, really),
> and for the most part was quite happy with it.  Amazingly fast boot,
> seemed stable to me, and I actually recommended it to management for a
> portion of our network.  Politics took us in a different direction
> though, we stuck with Juniper (we have a T-series core, and now some
> MX480s/240s).
>  Off the top of my head, these were a few of the 'shortcomings' I
> found with the MLX-4 which, for us, wouldn't have necessarily been
> showstoppers, as workarounds were surely available.  They may or may
> not apply to you at all:
>
> -can't gather per-VLAN input/output stats via SNMP on a dot1q port
> (displays total port stats only), although the account team committed
> to providing a fix if we bought x number of them)
> -there were some QinQ intricacies that I had a hard time wrapping my
> head around, but eventually made it work
> -couldn't hold a global routing table inside a VRF/L3VPN due to the
> TCAM memory partitioning Brocade uses (we house the internet in a VRF
> on our Juniper network).
> -unable to do dot1q *and* MPLS on the same physical port (fixed in
> release 5.0.0 apparently)
> -code upgrades are a little clumsy, with multiple image upgrades
> required, and no In-Service Software Upgrade as far as I know.
>
>  I never touched IPv6 on it, so can't help you there.  But, I was
> running OSPFv2, BGP (no full tables during my eval), MPLS (LDP &
> RSVP-TE w/FRR) and interop'ing with some Junipers, and built VLLs,
> VPLSs, and VRFs which all worked between the platforms.
>
>  I've heard the odd report of frequent hardware failures on the
> XMR/MLX line, but can't say how recent said reports are and I didn't
> hear them first hand.
>  I still really like the MLX/XMR boxes, and would love to get my
> hands on one of the new CERs, but alas, it may not be in the cards.  I
> think the MLX is a decent box (we ended up buying an MLX-4 which still
> sits in our lab) and you simply can't beat the price (they were less
> than 1/2 the price of similarly spec'd Juniper, Cisco and
> Alcatel-Lucent boxes).
>
>  That said, the MX240 is a great box too, if not a little
> weird.....only 2 slots for line cards if you have redundant REs.  Tons
> of horse power, best CLI IMO, and generally speaking it just 'works'.
> If it weren't for the extraordinarily high price, I'd say it was a
> near perfect box.
>
>  Anyhow, not sure it helped, but good luck.
>
> David
>
>
>
>
> On 6 May 2010 19:59, Scott T. Cameron <routehero at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm in the market for a new edge router.  It must be capable of
> performing
> > BGP on IPv4 and IPv6, OSPF and scale to 10GbE uplinks.
> > The two products in mind are:
> > Foundry NetIron MLX-4
> > vs
> > Juniper MX240
> > There will be no more than 10 BGP sessions in the configuration.
> > I have had a bad experience from having early adopted the Juniper
> SRX-series
> > firewall, so I'm not sure if I can trust their product lines.
> > We already have a large install base of Foundry FESX648s and SX800s in
> the
> > core.
> > Anyone have experience with either?  With both?  Or any other useful
> > guidance?
> > Thanks.
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundry-nsp mailing list
> > foundry-nsp at puck.nether.net
> > http://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/foundry-nsp
> >
>
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