[j-nsp] Best route reflector platform

[Pavel Lunin]

2013/4/24 Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net> wrote:


> it either won't work at all, or won't survive for very
> long. And that's after taking a lot of steps to reduce core IBGP mesh
> route load. I haven't touched any of the "virtual SRX" stuff, does it
> run 64-bit JUNOS?
>

I haven't either (it's just rumors :) but I don't believe it will be any
better than normal JUNOS from this perspective.

There is another caveat. The difference of boxes like SRX or J (be it
virtual or not) is that their "PFE" (fwdd process) also holds FIB (not only
the flow session table), which is stored in the same RAM. You might be able
to reduce it with a RIB->FIB policy, though I don't know whether it'll save
any memory. For the Internet routes FIB might be not that huge thing,
especially in comparison with the flow table, but for a VPN environment it
might consume quite a noticeable amount of RAM. One might prefer to just
totally shut up the fwdd on such an RR, but I don't believe it will work
(at least stably).

In fairness I really don't think there is a "big" market for dedicated
> RR's, so I'm sure it isn't on the top of anyone's radar. That said, it
> is an absurdly easy problem to solve, with almost no work required (ship
> JUNOS on 1U PC and call it JCS100). So besides greatly pissing off many
> of its largest customers, they're leaving money on the floor and forcing
> people into other solutions with other vendors.
>

Agree.


> I really can't imagine that the benefit of selling an extra MX240 chassis,
> even if sold at
> regular price, is worth the money being lost from everyone else
>

BTW, does an empty chassis with just an SCB and RE work here? BGP will
definitely run through fxp0 but I haven't ever tried to run an MX with no
line cards. It seems this should work, but does it, anyone tried in
production?