[f-nsp] Turboiron24x or ICX6650 for IPv6 switching

[David Hubbard]

Hi all, is anyone using either a TurboIron 24x or the ICX 6650 in an
IPv6 environment?  We're considering using a pair of either as basically
top of rack switches for vmware clusters.  They'd do no routing,
however, we're a web host and these switches would be subjected to what
would definitely be an atypical network compared to an enterprise.  On
the downstream vmware side, depending on how many guests there are and
how many websites are hosted on those guests, there may be upwards of
30,000 IPv6 addresses spread amongst just a few ports so the concern is
how the switch handles neighbor discovery and switching of ipv6 packets.

I'm considering these two Brocade models along with the Cisco 4500-x.
Cisco has most of the specs I've needed on their website.  Forwarding in
hardware, dynamic pool used for ipv4 arp vs ipv6 neighbor discovery
data, etc.  I've been trying to get the same information out of Brocade
for the better part of two months but about all I've been able to get is
the ipv4 arp table sizes for both models and an assurance that they do
ipv6 switching in hardware (even though the TI 24x didn't support ipv6
when it first came out).  I can't get any information from them actually
demonstrating they do switch ipv6 in hardware, ipv6 benchmarks, how
either switch handles neighbor discovery, the ND table size, if it's
shared and what the ratio is if so, etc.  Any chance any of you have any
bits or pieces of that info?  And/or have verified both models do ipv6
switching in hardware?  Or are using them in that type of environment?

Thanks!

David