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  1. #1
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    BGP on Juniper EX4300 question

    Would a Juniper EX4300 switch support the application of BGP in today's internet?

    I am looking for a switch/router to use in a datacenter and support 1Gbps network throughput.
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  2. #2
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    I don't think 2GB of memory is enough for today's BGP. Not to mention all of your VLANs and memory required to manage the stack.

    While it may technically be possible to announce BGP with it, it would definitely not be ideal and lead to sub-par performance.
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  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crothers View Post
    I don't think 2GB of memory is enough for today's BGP. Not to mention all of your VLANs and memory required to manage the stack.

    While it may technically be possible to announce BGP with it, it would definitely not be ideal and lead to sub-par performance.
    In your opinion, what would be the minimum requirements for this? Do you have any experence with a layer 3 switch that does well?
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  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crothers View Post
    I don't think 2GB of memory is enough for today's BGP. Not to mention all of your VLANs and memory required to manage the stack.

    While it may technically be possible to announce BGP with it, it would definitely not be ideal and lead to sub-par performance.
    This statement is not necessarily true.

    The use case may only require default route(s), in which case an EX4300 would do a fine job.
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  5. #5
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    What will be the use of the switch? What sort of routes are you taking?
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  6. #6
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    It would have about 2-4 BGP peers. We would need about 10 to 15 vLAN's. This of course, will probably change in the future.
    Last edited by DamienSB; 09-23-2013 at 01:48 AM.
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  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by DamienSB View Post
    It would have about 2-4 BGP peers. We would need about 10 to 15 vLAN's. This of course, will probably change in the future.
    What are you going to receive from the peers?

    If they are Internet transit providers and you wish to receive full tables.. Then no, the EX4300 will not do this.

    The EX4300 supports 32,000 routes (It will probably hold more, but it's not going to hold nearly half a million for the Internet).
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  8. #8
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    Get a brocade CER -RT version
    Great pricing, offers identical swich port configs and does full table bgp

  9. #9
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    If you use BGP only for default routes and internal BGP it will work. 2 GB will be more than enough for this (only 32k routes are possible with EX4300).

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ionity View Post
    This statement is not necessarily true.

    The use case may only require default route(s), in which case an EX4300 would do a fine job.
    True, I just assumed from the initial post he was going to do a full AS peering/upstream/exchange type dealio.
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  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by DedicatedXL View Post
    Get a brocade CER -RT version
    Great pricing, offers identical swich port configs and does full table bgp
    Doing some searching on here for routers recently, I came accross a number of posts indicating that the CER falls over under moderate traffic. Not sure if the RT version changes this or not but it at least justifies further investigation before considering that platform.
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  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by funkywizard View Post
    Doing some searching on here for routers recently, I came accross a number of posts indicating that the CER falls over under moderate traffic. Not sure if the RT version changes this or not but it at least justifies further investigation before considering that platform.
    well every platform has it's flaws and bugs, it all depends on what you do with it mpls,vpls,bgp etc

    we have a few of the RT ones in small pops and they do their job just fine

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by DedicatedXL View Post
    well every platform has it's flaws and bugs, it all depends on what you do with it mpls,vpls,bgp etc

    we have a few of the RT ones in small pops and they do their job just fine
    Assuming the info I saw was correct, it would seem that it's more of a throughput issue than anything, i.e. pushing a couple gig the thing falls over, rather than a more typical issue you see other places like a limit on number of routes or arp or cpu or memory or whatever. Really seems like a serious issue that a supposedly high end (and high priced) router with 4x10g port options that can't do more than a couple gigs before dying. The MX80 would seem a better option as it's a similar price, can be configured with similar port count, and is known for better performance and a similar routing table size (1mm mx80 vs 1.5mm CER).

    I haven't used either router myself, so I do think additional research is justified before recommending one over the other, but certainly I wouldn't jump head first into the CER without figuring out why these other people had these issues and see if you are likely to have the same ones or not.
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  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Core-Backbone GmbH View Post
    If you use BGP only for default routes and internal BGP it will work. 2 GB will be more than enough for this (only 32k routes are possible with EX4300).
    So, what will actually happen if you give him a full table? Does Juniper implement a counter and will simply drop the rest of the routes if that one reach 32000?

  15. #15
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    I don't have tried it yet. But I recommend to apply policy filters to avoid this problem.

  16. #16
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    32k routes is nothing. You might be able to take a default+partials. MAYBE. For a dual carrier 'failover' setup this router might work well for you but if you want any kind of decent routing or load balancing while maintaining redundancy, well, good luck with it.
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  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by FastServ View Post
    32k routes is nothing. You might be able to take a default+partials. MAYBE. For a dual carrier 'failover' setup this router might work well for you but if you want any kind of decent routing or load balancing while maintaining redundancy, well, good luck with it.
    It's technically a switch, not a router
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  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by FastServ View Post
    32k routes is nothing. You might be able to take a default+partials. MAYBE. For a dual carrier 'failover' setup this router might work well for you but if you want any kind of decent routing or load balancing while maintaining redundancy, well, good luck with it.
    You wouldn't run this configuration with routes at scale. It would really be for something like having two or more bgp sessions that all sent default routes to you.

    Say you wanted to have a premium carrier like Level(3), and protect that with Cogent and you didn't care about using cogent for much of anything.

    Sure you could install some routes to go around the primary carrier. For example lets pretend Cogent has excellent connectivity to Comcast, and is 1/6 the cost of Level(3),you could pick up a bunch of Comcast's largest prefixes and be just fine with that kind of traffic engineering.
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  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ionity View Post
    Sure you could install some routes to go around the primary carrier. For example lets pretend Cogent has excellent connectivity to Comcast, and is 1/6 the cost of Level(3),you could pick up a bunch of Comcast's largest prefixes and be just fine with that kind of traffic engineering.
    Can the switch track the BGP sessions status and pull the static route if the session goes down, but interface stays up? Without some kind of tracking attached to the static routes it's a time bomb waiting to go off.
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  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by FastServ View Post
    Can the switch track the BGP sessions status and pull the static route if the session goes down, but interface stays up? Without some kind of tracking attached to the static routes it's a time bomb waiting to go off.
    The routes would be tied to the interface status, so if the interface went down the routes would uninstall.

    You could also configure the switch to monitor external target IP's across your uplinks and have it shut down the Interface / BGP / uninstall routes / etc based on real world performance metrics rather than just BGP session availability.
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  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ionity View Post
    The routes would be tied to the interface status, so if the interface went down the routes would uninstall.

    You could also configure the switch to monitor external target IP's across your uplinks and have it shut down the Interface / BGP / uninstall routes / etc based on real world performance metrics rather than just BGP session availability.
    Relying on interface status is always a horrible idea. Just use BFD.

  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by RackPoint-Morgan View Post
    Relying on interface status is always a horrible idea. Just use BFD.
    Not always an option if you don't control both sides.

    That's why I suggested using something else, such as RPM, or a myriad of other tools available on junos to protect against this.
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  23. #23
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    Don't know until you ask. Providers usually can do that.

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