[j-nsp] EX4200 questions

Fri May 14 08:46:04 EDT 2010

Hi,

We also choose the Ex4200 as a backhaul solution, using RSVP based CCC's.
On top of that we strip off the outer vlan at the far end port, and push a new and unique outer vlan tag on the connection towards our Mx240's.

So it runs as a layer 2 "PE", with no problems so far. 
I think the restriction is that the EX only can manipulate the MPLS top label.

We skipped the virtual chassis stuff for now, but we might consider to use it in the future.

This device is a cisco killer, when it comes to access aggregation. I love it.

Med venlig hilsen

Peter Krupl

Netværksspecialist
Teknik

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Siminn Danmark A/S

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-----Original Message-----
From: juniper-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net [mailto:juniper-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Derick Winkworth
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 2:31 PM
Cc: juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net
Subject: Re: [j-nsp] EX4200 questions

The bug situation is getting better though, I think...  

We have EX-4200s in our environment and aside from an earlier aggregated-ethernet bug and a hardware issue, they have been rock-solid.  In our environment they are L2 Q-in-Q only, no routing.  We have MPLS licenses for the units in our lab and we have labbed RSVP and OSPF on these units (as 'P' nodes) and we didn't have any issues.

As stated, every release has new features.  The upside is that the platform is maturing, the downside is bugs.  But like I said, I think Juniper is getting a handle on that...

________________________________
From: Chris Evans <chrisccnpspam2 at gmail.com>
To: Bernhard Schmidt <berni at birkenwald.de>
Cc: juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net
Sent: Fri, May 14, 2010 6:58:17 AM
Subject: Re: [j-nsp] EX4200 questions

It sounds like the EX4200 would be a fit for you if you're only doing l2, as
you mentioned it doesn't have a big FIB for a large amount of routes.. You
said that 16k routes would suffice for you, so perhaps you are doing L3 but
you're not importing full route feeds in this network area. I somehow
remember only testing to 14K and it started to complain about the FIB being
full.. I would double check that capacity limit, I think it changed on
versions of code.

My company is a huge Cisco shop and we've been trying out the EX4200s in
pockets. They seem to work well when you don't require a feature or run into
a bug. The EX's are feature-poor compared to a 6500. Code wise, the later
the better, which is different than the other JUNOS platforms. Juniper is
adding much needed switching features to later releases, expect bugs though.
I personally think the bug issue has flipped sides.. Cisco's code seems very
stable to me compared to JUNOS, we've found glaringly huge bugs in JUNOS
lately. We're running 10.x on our EX's and 9.6 on our MX/M series.

As for SPT, you could use VSTP (and use Rapid-PVST on Cisco side) or MSTP.
MSTP inter operates correctly, VSTP does 99%. VSTP works fully except for
VLAN1. Cisco listens to the IEEE 802.1D MAC-Address for this VLAN, but VSTP
on JUNOS only sends to the Cisco proprietary MAC so its messages get
ignored. I hope you aren't using VLAN 1 and are pruning it from your trunks.
If you do this you will be okay.. VSTP operates exactly like Rapid-PVSTs in
that there is a tree built for every VLAN.

JUNOS also uses the newer IEEE format of spanning-tree pathcosts, so on the
Cisco box you should do 'spanning-tree pathcost method long' as it defaults
to the older 'short' method. 32bit value vs 16bit.

All in all I'm sure it would work sufficiently for you. The EX4200-24F has a
nice price point and performance value.

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 7:32 AM, Bernhard Schmidt <berni at birkenwald.de>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> we are a small ISP with a Cisco-only core at the moment, consisting of
> two 6500 series and a couple of Cat2960G aggregation switches. We are
> looking into deploying to a small IX in the area, which is at the same
> location as two of our upstreams. So we are going to throw a second
> fiber to the location and put up a small device that can switch GE
> linerate for the upstreams and route a couple of 100M to/from the IX
> into the backbone. We have been considering the Cisco ME6524 series but
> are now looking at the EX4200-24F as well.
>
> Since I don't have much experience with Juniper in general (and with
> recent devices like the EX especially) I have a few questions I could
> not find answered in the datasheets.
>
> - How is the interoperatibility with Cisco PVSTP+ on L2? I found
>
> http://www.juniper.net/us/en/local/pdf/implementation-guides/8010002-en.pdf
>  which briefly mentions VSTP as being basically the same (and thus fully
>  compatible), but then talks in length about how to get standard STP or
>  MSTP interoperating with Cisco. Does VSTP "just work" as it does in
>  Cisco, plug the device in as you want to and every VLAN gets its own
>  tree?
>
> - Datasheet says 16k IPv4 routes and 4k IPv6 routes, I assume this is
>  shared space and an IPv6 route just takes four times the resources of
>  an IPv4 route?
>
> - Apart from the small FIB, is there any reason why the EX would not be
>  suitable for this application? Basically we run a fully-dualstacked
>  network, OSPFv2/OSPFv3, BGP, some MPLS/L3VPN (but probably not at this
>  location for the time being). I expect at most 30-40 BGP peers with
>  total prefix count safely within the limits of the hardware.
>
> Thanks for your answers,
> Bernhard
>
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