I think "cheap" is a relative term. When you say "not cheap" do you mean compared to a Cisco or Juniper equivalent? That's a rhetorical question by the way. :)
Recently I did a LOT of comparisons on different solutions for BGP speakers from Extreme, Cisco, Foundry, Juniper, etc etc etc.... I found the Foundry XMR to be the best bang for the buck and since installing a few in our network I would definitely recommend them. Aaron -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Clint Chapman Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 2:21 PM To: Ryan Harden Cc: [email protected]; Dan Pinkard Subject: Re: [f-nsp] Is there much to recommend an MLX? Dan, I am just going to toss out a quick vote for the XMR line. We have them at our edge/backbone in 6 major cities here in the US and couldn't be happier. With that being said, they aren't cheap, but year end I am sure you can close out a good deal :) Thanks! Clint P.S. Good to see another foundry guy here in the mid-west (our office is in Bloomington, IL) On Wed, 2008-12-03 at 14:14 -0600, Ryan Harden wrote: > We use the Foundry MLX platform in our Layer3/MPLS only statewide > network. These boxes hold two full copies of the global BGP table as > well as several other sessions with 10-100k prefixes each. There are 10 > routers total, all 'no route-only', all interconnected at 10G, and a mix > of AC/DC power. > > We are very happy with the MLX platform. We intend to turn IPv6 in the > near future (a few weeks). We are using MPLS sparingly but VLL transport > is solid. BGP runs on top of MPLS and is handled nicely. > > The MLX/XMR is the first Foundry "backbone class" platform that I'm > comfortable saying is an all around excellent product. Previous and > lesser products are not as happy when doing both Layer2 and Layer3. Some > are excellent Layer2 switches, some are excellent Layer3 switches, but > not both at the same time. This is sometimes due to CAM > sizing/partitioning, sometimes due to features not being supported. Some > products have features like "These two features are supported, but not > at the same time" which make them less desirable when used in a > layer2/layer3 application. The MLX/XMR has a few of these as well, but > nothing absolutely shocking. Well, maybe one or two.... > > We picked the MLX due to price as well as our rather large Foundry > install base here at the Urbana campus. If I had to go back and respec, > I would probably go with the XMR over the MLX due to the 2x CAM size. We > are very familiar with the Foundry platform which also influenced our > decision. Other options were explored but were either too expensive or > were way over-sized for our needs. That being said, we are a state > institution and are also bound to a RFP/Bid system that weighs cost > almost as high as technical ability of a device. > > /Ryan > > Dan Pinkard wrote: > > Time and time again I've gotten anecdotal recommendations that Foundry should only be used for layer 2. I would like to open that up to a wider audience with a perhaps more directed question: > > > > What is there about the MLX platform that helps it compare to the available offerings from Juniper/Cisco/etc? Why did you end up with that gear other than just price? With the same options available, would you buy it again? > > > > (Please avoid the flamable aspects of that conversation) > > _______________________________________________ > > foundry-nsp mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/foundry-nsp > _______________________________________________ > foundry-nsp mailing list > [email protected] > http://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/foundry-nsp _______________________________________________ foundry-nsp mailing list [email protected] http://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/foundry-nsp _______________________________________________ foundry-nsp mailing list [email protected] http://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/foundry-nsp
