[j-nsp] The hunt for a better route reflector

[Richard A Steenbergen]

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 08:00:49PM +0800, Mark Tinka wrote:
> On Friday, July 23, 2010 05:34:15 pm Pavel Lunin wrote:
> 
> > Didn't you tested J4350/4350 or SRX650 with 2 Gigs of RAM
> > and filters which block full table from RIB->FIB export?
> 
> No, we never did test them for this role because:
> 
> 	- When we wanted to, the J-series only supported 1GB
> 	  of DRAM maximum. That didn't bode well with us
> 	  :-).
> 
> 	- When 2GB came out, the size of JUNOS was a little
> 	  scary, compared to IOS.
> 
> 	- Then JUNOS for the J-series moved to JUNOS-ES, and
> 	  this was the final nail in the coffin for us.

(Hijacking thread to something productive)

Even prior to JUNOS-ES, J-series was particularly hard hit by the BGP 
stall issue. I tested them for route reflector use and found them 
stalling for 30+ minutes with ~20 neighbors, regardless of blocking 
routes -> FIB. Several people have told me off-list that J-series would 
never be a good option for this because of hard-coded scheduler 
priorities which favor forwarding over control-plane even when there is 
no forwarding load. Of course that didn't stop them from taking my money 
for the route reflector license. :)

The official answer when you ask for a standalone route-reflector 
solution is supposedly JCS, though from what I've been told the pricing 
is outrageous (it must be, it's not even on the price list, so I've 
never even bothered to ask :P). I'm wondering if the EX-series external 
RE might be viable as a standalone RR, since it would have to be priced 
at least somewhat reasonably to serve in the function they're marketing 
it for. The hardware specs are certainly not terrible.

http://www.juniper.net/us/en/products-services/switching/ex-series/options/xre200/

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)