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

[Debbie Fligor]

The regional network is on 3.9 and we know the mBGP fix is in the 4.0x code, but have been having trouble getting the upgrade scheduled. the backbone for our campus is on 4.0.1a and that was supposed to fix our MSDP problem, but we've had so many other things in the fire I haven't tested it (and I was going to have to turn on BGP on our OSPF-only routers).  I'm trying to do a 3-device anycast RP mesh, and the two 6500's work fine, but the MLX wouldn't install the entries in the SA list because everything fails RPF check (our multicast doesn't work through our firewals, it has a physical bypass).  the normal 5th option for forcing a device to accept SAs is to have an override configured, but even though that's in the MSDP standard, the MLXs don't support it. 

Now we're supposed to got to 4.1.0ba (because 4.1.0 caused problems and we had to back out, which was awful, the vrf and MAC blocking syntax is totally changed) because I found a problem where PIM wasn't doing what it was supposed to, so I'm waiting for that before trying MSDP again. 

Right now we've had to apply a multicast boundary command to block UPnP in order to try and keep one of our MLXs from crashing until after finals are over because it was saying it was out of resources and misbehaving (we swapped the chassis and things got better, but we wont know if it's all fixed probably until fall when the students come back).

At the moment our multicast beacons are being seen off-campus, but we can't see anything -- beacons, SAP advertisements, you name it. the 2 RP/MSDP speakers appear to see things (~67  beacon (S,G) states), but the first hop into the backbone only sees ~ 23, and the last hop router before one of our beacons only sees about 6. tcpdump on the actual beacon hosts only shows local on-campus traffic.  This one might turn out to be something on the regional net (all MLX) or the 6500's, but right now it looks mostly like the on-campus MLXs. We've got a case open, but we can't trouble shoot anything until after our finals are over.

I've been fighting with PIM for 3 backbones now, jetcore, NI-40, and MLXs, and the MLXs are much, much better, but they still keep breaking over and over -- I've yet to have multicast run for 6 straight months without a problem, only a few of which have been my mistakes :-) 


On May 7, 2010, at 15:36, Brad Fleming wrote:

>> I can't honestly recommend them if you run PIM or MSDP however, that  
>> has been (and still is) a nightmare to keep working correctly.
> 
> Now I'm kind of interested in what software version you guys are using  
> because we run PIM + MSDP + mBGP and don't have any issues. We're  
> currently on 4.0.00ca with plans to move to 4.0.01d this summer. We  
> shed most of our multicast problems with an upgrade away from  
> 3.8.00(x) a couple years ago. What kinds of issues are you having with  
> keeping PIM and MSDP working?
> 
> (I'm really just curious)
> _______________________________________________
> foundry-nsp mailing list
> foundry-nsp at puck.nether.net
> http://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/foundry-nsp

-----
-debbie
Debbie Fligor, n9dn       Network Engineer, CITES, Univ. of Il
email: fligor at illinois.edu          <http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/fligor>
                   "My turn."  -River Tam