Thanks very much for the links - we've been reviewing options and decided to pursue the EX4200 switches and hang some smaller M routers " on the side" ;)
Best regards, Paul From: Pavel Lunin [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: October-09-09 3:06 AM To: Paul Stewart Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [j-nsp] EX Routing Throughput Hi Paul, L3 switching is done in hardware (EX-PFE) so it is said to be wire-rate as well as L2. Firewall filters are also hardware based so they don't degrade performance in some reasonable amount (several thousand filter terms, I guess). However you should consider the FIB constrains for EX3200/4200. You can't have more than 12k IPv4 active routes (and about half of that for IPv6) on these platforms. As the other have already said, the main difference between 3200 and 4200 is virtual chassis. But I'd like to note that it is not just a fun gadget which allows to have a solid fully redundant control plane for up to 10 switches. You should also keep in mind that 4200 have one more PFE onboard and 2x 64Gbit full duplex (!) VC ports. So they have almost doubled performance in compare with 3200. For example, if you have 2 x 3200-24T priced $3k each, and you want to connect them with a single 10Gig link, I have to buy 2 uplink modules (2x$2k) and 2 XFP/SFP+, ($1.5k the cheapest). Well, it is at least $6.5k per system. If you use 2 x 4200-24T instead, priced $6k each, you have 2 wire-rate switches connected with a 128 Gbps backplane. .5 meters VC-cables are shipped with the boxes. But you are limited with the length of VC cables up to 5 meters. You can built a VC cluster with ethernet ports, but in this case you won't get that plenty of additional perrformance. EX4200 also support redundant power supply. So in terms of plain pps performance EX is a good choice. But be aware of feature limitations. Take a lot at this links: http://www.juniper.net/techpubs/en_US/junos9.6/topics/reference/general/ex-s eries-l3-protocols-supported.html http://www.juniper.net/techpubs/en_US/junos9.6/topics/reference/general/ex-s eries-l3-protocols-not-supported.html http://www.juniper.net/techpubs/en_US/junos9.6/topics/concept/ex-series-soft ware-features-overview.html EX3200/4200 still have some minor issues with loopback filters. IFAIR, they still can't log the traffic directed to the control plane. -- Regards, Pavel 2009/9/29 Paul Stewart <[email protected]> Hi there.. Does anyone have any real-world feedback on the layer3 performance of EX3200 and/or EX4200 switches? I've searched around and cannot find out the capabilities (pps/Gbps) but new to the Juniper world ;) Our needs are reasonable simple I think - considering putting in 10 EX4200 in a virtual chassis configuration using the Virtual Chassis Cabling. This allows us ample copper ports on the front and we can use the 4X1GE or 2X10GE ports for our fiber needs. Total layer3 throughput would probably be about 1Gb/s average and peak at 2Gb/s. OSPF, some small ACL, and IPv6 would be used. Thanks for any feedback, Paul _______________________________________________ juniper-nsp mailing list [email protected] https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/juniper-nsp _______________________________________________ juniper-nsp mailing list [email protected] https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/juniper-nsp
