Greg has laid out a great bit of information and I would like to add just one possibility to the list of budget 10GE routers: Vyatta. According to a recent press release from that company ( http://www.vyatta.com/about/pressreleases.php?id=51) they offer a product that is "2 to 3X higher performance at a cost savings of more than 75 percent" when compared to Cisco's 7200. Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to test or use the Vyatta routers yet; I have however successfully used other open-source Linux based routers in the past with great success. If you are looking for a truly budget 10GE router, they may be worth adding to the list and looking into.
On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 10:36 AM, Greg VILLAIN <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Mar 24, 2008, at 10:23 AM, user user wrote: > > > > Hi everybody! > > > > I find myself in the market for some 10GE routers. As > > I don't buy these everyday, I was wondering if any of > > you guys had any good resources for evaluating > > different vendors and models. I'm mainly thinking > > about non-vendor resources as the vendorspeak sites > > are not that hard to find. > > > > Also I'd love to hear recommendatios for "budget" 10GE > > routers. The "budget" router would be used to hook up > > client networks through one 10GE interface and connect > > to different transit providers through two 10GE > > interfaces. > > > > - Zed > > Hiya, > > When it comes to budget, force10 are good. I wouldn't be able to > confirm if they're worth performance-wise. > I'd strongly suggest Foundry, I'm a big fan of their kits, price-wise > and performance-wise, provided you do not need rocket-science features. > MLX/XMR models will surely do the trick perfectly. > > When it comes to router purchasing habits, we all tend to get > religious... > Bottom line is that most of the 'regular' vendors (namely Cisco, > Juniper, Foundry, Force10, Extreme, Riverstone) implement pretty much > the same set of features, which are all IETF/IEEE normalized, meaning > if you don't need proprietary features (and you'll wish you don't), > any router will be fine, the only difference will come from: > - the chassis being non-blocking or not (i.e. backplane design) > - the price per port > - the operating OS > - the feeling you'll get with the salesperson, and the reputation of > their Support Teams. > - vendor specific features such as Flow Sampling > To make it simple, most vendors have an IOS like OS, except Juniper > which has a really clever and elegant OS, but are very pricey. > Foundry and Force10 have the cheapest price per port > Cisco does only Netflow, Foundry & Force10 only SFlow (which is a true > standard) and I think Juniper does JFlow > Cisco's kits are packed with proprietary protocols (HSRP and GLBP > instead of VRRP, their own ethernet trunking, EIGRP as their own and > yet extremely efficient IGP, TCL scriptable CLI...) , some of them are > really good, some are crappy, but I suggest you'd stick with IEEE/IETF > protocol to avoid future trouble. > > One thing: RSTP/802-1w is very (very, very, very) not often > interoperable between vendors who all have their own interpretation of > the norm and can quickly turn into a nightmare. > I'd strongly suggest try&buys if (R)STP interoperability is required, > but I'm a little paranoid :) > > Greg VILLAIN > Independant Network & Telco Architecture Consultant > > > -- "Those who do not create the future they want must endure the future they get." ~Draper L. Kaufman, Jr. --
