On 7/27/21 22:48, William Hilsum wrote:
I’ve gone over this a few times and it is really hard to write without
going salesy and that is not the direction I want to push this. Most
documents I have come from vendors that favour a few metrics that they
excel at. I will try to keep this generic:
We’ve seen SONIC come from Microsoft and similar solutions from other
hyperscalers… All the network vendors seem to be moving to using the
same few chips and differentiating themselves with
support/RMA/software features rather than the raw hardware itself.
As for “Do ISPs need full feature top end vendor kit?” – it’s a hard
one… I know “ISPs” that run entirely on Mikrotik/Ubiquiti and
terminate a few 1Gb leased lines and I know some that run on ancient
EoL Cisco bits… Each to their own! In my mind, the answer is that it
depends on the requirements and I would be shocked if you can’t get
better density and performance at a significantly reduced price when
going for (any vendor) that utilises Jericho 2 (if comparing against
new – not second hand/EOL ASR 9006).
For the density and performance – Jericho switches have it. For BGP –
I haven’t heard of a problem with convergence yes and L2/L3 tunnels
are not a requirement I’ve personally dealt with – usually I get
involved with companies that terminate those away from core.
Please note, I’m not comparing against MX480 which I don’t have
personal experience with other than an online spec sheet… From Juniper
I only know the MX204 and their switching range. When looking at a
certain Jericho based vendor for a job I’m working on now, the only
metric that seemed to have a big difference maximum routes which came
out at ~2M on the MX204 and ~1.25M in the other vendor which the
client said “was more than enough for our needs for the foreseeable
future”
If your business model, I feel, is biased more toward hauling bits
around, no frills, then you'd be foolish not to consider the
Broadcom-based platforms from a number of vendors.
If your business model is so-called "high-touch", and servicing
Enterprise-type customers who want the kitchen sink, then you are very
likely to run into silicon problems on the cheaper options.
Mark.
