[j-nsp] Qfabric

Thu Feb 24 17:32:39 EST 2011

I honestly wonder how many caveats there is going to be.  Everything sounds
great on paper from every vendor....
On Feb 24, 2011 5:28 PM, "Derick Winkworth" <dwinkworth at att.net> wrote:
> Also integrated L2/L3 forwarding so that you don't hairpin traffic through
a
> node where the L2/L3 pieces meet (like VPLS to a node where the IRB
interface
> is..)
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Doug Hanks <dhanks at juniper.net>
> To: Chris Evans <chrisccnpspam2 at gmail.com>; Stefan Fouant
> <sfouant at shortestpathfirst.net>
> Cc: Juniper-Nsp List <juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net>
> Sent: Thu, February 24, 2011 11:15:53 AM
> Subject: Re: [j-nsp] Qfabric
>
> A lot of our customers require low latency:  financial, higher education,
HPC
> environments and utility.
>
> Juniper has taken the time to solve more than just the low latency
problem.
> We're trying to solve larger problems such as how do you manage an entire
campus
> or data center as one logical device; that's able to scale; and delivers
> performance and low latency.
>
> Doug
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: juniper-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net
> [mailto:juniper-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Chris Evans
> Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 8:55 PM
> To: Stefan Fouant
> Cc: Juniper-Nsp List
> Subject: Re: [j-nsp] Qfabric
>
> Low latency is a buzz word. Who really needs it? Very few applications
> really need it. I work in the financial industry and the only place we
have
> a use case for low latency is in the investment bank context.. its like 20
> switches out of the thousands we have. retail, treasury, card etc. Couldnt
> care.
>
> Also keep in mind that Juniper is one of the last to meet the low latency
> game.They are talking the game finally and people are buying into it.
> Everyone else is or has already  built lower latency switches than even
> these boxes already using the same merchant silicon.
>
> All in all I sure hope juniper gets this one right. The ex platforms still
> have a lot of catching up to do just to match Cisco and  brocade
features..
> I don't care about latency I care about the features that I need to run my
> business.
> On Feb 23, 2011 10:11 PM, "Stefan Fouant" <sfouant at shortestpathfirst.net>
> wrote:
>> Remember, a key differentiator is that TRILL solutions still require
>> forwarding table lookups on each node; as such, end-to-end latencies are
>> much higher.
>>
>> Another thing to point out is that QFabric allows exponential scaling in
>> that each device added to the fabric contributes additional switching
>> capacity, whereby we can achieve n^2 scaling benefits. It is interesting
> to
>> see the n-squared problem turned on its head - usually meshes are complex
>> and cumbersome - here, it only makes things better :)
>>
>> Stefan Fouant, CISSP, JNCIEx2
>> www.shortestpathfirst.net
>> GPG Key ID: 0xB4C956EC
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: juniper-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net [mailto:juniper-nsp-
>>> bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Ben Dale
>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 9:41 PM
>>> To: Juniper-Nsp List
>>> Subject: Re: [j-nsp] Qfabric
>>>
>>> My understanding of the Brocade VDX is that they use their own
>>> proprietary flavour of TRILL in order to handle the management of the
>>> switches? Happy for someone to correct me on this though.
>>>
>>> As Stefan pointed out - where the TRILL-based solutions fall down is
>>> controlling oversubscription - for every customer-facing revenue port,
>>> you need uplink(s) of equal capacity on *every* switch between point A
>>> and point B, which gets a bit hairy when your customer wants 10GB.
>>>
>>> Even on it's own though, the QFX looks like a pretty sweet box, but I
>>> don't think I've ever seen a Juniper Data Sheet with as many roadmap
>>> asterisks ; )
>>>
>>> It'll be interesting to see if Juniper offer a half-sized QFabric down
>>> the road once they realise that not everyone wants / needs 128x 40GB
>>> attached switches
>>>
>>> Interesting times!
>>>
>>> On 24/02/2011, at 12:11 PM, Keegan Holley wrote:
>>>
>>> > I think Brocade released nearly the same technology a couple of
>>> months ago
>>> > in their VDX product. Cisco can't be far behind. Although, their
>>> solution
>>> > will most likely be proprietary. As far as the technology I think
>>> > spanning-tree and the current way of doing ethernet has not been
>>> ideal for
>>> > some time.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 9:04 PM, Stefan Fouant <
>>> > sfouant at shortestpathfirst.net> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> It's more than just a competitive offering to compete with the likes
>>> of the
>>> >> Nexus switches from Cisco, and its also quite a bit different from
>>> Cisco's
>>> >> FabricPath or other similar TRILL offerings. With FabricPath and
>>> TRILL we
>>> >> solve the problem of wasted revenue ports associated with complex 3-
>>> Tier
>>> >> architectures and blocked Spanning Tree ports, but you still have a
>>> >> forwarding table lookup taking place on each node along the path.
>>> With
>>> >> QFabric we have a set of devices which combine to form a singular
>>> unified
>>> >> fabric, all sharing a single control plane and managed via a single
>>> pane of
>>> >> glass, but more importantly achieving reduced latency as a result of
>>> a
>>> >> single forwarding table lookup taking place on the ingress node.
>>> With such a
>>> >> configuration we can achieve end-to-end Data Center latency on the
>>> order of
>>> >> 5 microseconds.
>>> >>
>>> >> There is a lot more to it which is obviously covered in the
>>> whitepapers,
>>> >> but this is truly something which is going to revolutionize data
>>> centers as
>>> >> we know it for some time to come.
>>> >>
>>> >> Stefan Fouant, CISSP, JNCIEx2
>>> >> GPG Key ID: 0xB4C956EC
>>> >>
>>> >> Sent from my HTC EVO.
>>> >>
>>> >> ----- Reply message -----
>>> >> From: "Chris Evans" <chrisccnpspam2 at gmail.com>
>>> >> Date: Wed, Feb 23, 2011 7:28 pm
>>> >> Subject: [j-nsp] Qfabric
>>> >> To: "Keegan Holley" <keegan.holley at sungard.com>
>>> >> Cc: "juniper-nsp" <juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> Its junipers answer to nexus 5k 2k soltuion with larger scalability
>>> >> essentially.
>>> >> It has a big fabric interconnect at the core and some routing
>>> engines that
>>> >> control edge switches acting like remote line cards.
>>> >>
>>> >> On Feb 23, 2011 7:23 PM, "Keegan Holley" <keegan.holley at sungard.com>
>>> >> wrote:
>>> >>> Does anyone know what Qfabric is yet? After the video where Pradeep
>>> >> Sindhu
>>> >>> spends 1:45 talking about how they are going to change the world
>>> and 0:45
>>> >>> talking about the technology I gave up trying to cut through the
>>> >> marketing
>>> >>> buffer. It sounds like their implementation or answer to trill with
>>> some
>>> >> of
>>> >>> the virtual chassis stuff you see from the nexus thrown in. Anyone
>>> else
>>> >> get
>>> >>> more than that?
>>> >>> _______________________________________________
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>>> >>
>>> >>
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