Hi John,
Why not simply accept fewer routes (plus a default) into the existing
Arista EOS BGP and so the hardware FIB? Then you can actually take
advantage of the hardware forwarding.
With this setup you’re using the relatively slow control plane (the
Intel FM6000 was released a decade ago and I can’t imagine Arista
paired it with a super-fast SoC…) to route and that won’t work very
quickly at all. In fact it may not have enough RAM and CPU to
effectively deal with a modern full table, it would be better to just
use a modern 1U server for this.
Will
On 28 Jun 2023, at 21:21, John P Bourke wrote:
Hi
I may have “an” answer. I think the Americans call this a “Hail
Mary Pass”.
I have a bunch Arista 7150s, which are EOL and a disappointment. But
I found this.
https://research.kudelskisecurity.com/2015/10/01/hacking-arista-appliances-for-fun-and-profit/#comments
The Arista runs a full Centos 7.6. You strip out the Arista BGP
process and BIRD (or FRR I guess) and you have a route server. I say
route server, because by pulling the Arista BGP process you have no
interaction with the RIB.
Thanks
John
BTW – Not dissing Arista. The 7150 is a bit of a unicorn in their
portfolio, using a chipset from Intel which they bought from a
startup, which Intel then dropped so Arista understandably did not put
a lot of effort into beyond the High Frequency Trading use cases that
this low latency switch is good for.
From: Tim Bray <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2023 6:56 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [uknof] Full table routers
On 28/06/2023 10:27, John P Bourke wrote:
Any recommendations for full table routers. We don’t need more than
10G.
I used Debian + FRR on HP proliants. With startech Nics with intel
chipset. Unusual, but did the trick. Help that there was a
whole stack of the same hardware running services in the same place.
They take a while to boot, but you can make it faster and I think the
newer variants are better.
Software wise, takes a bit of getting used to. Sometimes conflict
between FRR and what Debian wants to do for network setup. Also
you can use CAKE :) Also run any scripts or monitoring you want
onboard (like counting the BFD flaps per hour to watch the problems
that go away and come back very quickly)
See also distributions that bundle FRR more specifically for
networking rather than a general distribution.
--
Tim Bray
Huddersfield, GB
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
+44 7966479015
