Agreed. Whenever we buy any "major" component for our network (big routers, licensed links, big switches, etc.) we always buy a "spare" to go with it (if we don't already have one).

Example... our main backbone switch is a Cisco 3550-12T. All of our traffic (currently 450Mbps x 200Mbps) goes through this switch so we can "mirror" some of the ports for filtering and traffic monitoring. When we first purchased the switch, we bought 2 of them. We mounted the 2nd one directly above the first in our rack, and configured it exactly the same. So, if that switch ever dies, we simply move a few cables and we are back up and going... and at the same time, if we ever need to upgrade firmware, we can do it on the 2nd one, test it, and then move it into production and upgrade the 1st one.... with about 5 seconds of total downtime while we move cables.

Always, always have spares of your critical equipment. :)

Travis
Microserv

On 11/3/2010 10:54 PM, Tom DeReggi wrote:
Hot Swap is hard to fully accomplish with PCs. Everyone needs a plan for how maintenance will occur with minimal downtime. For example, its prettty easy to buy a nice Rack case with redundant PS, but how do you replace an overheating CPU? A standard Rack PC does not have HotSwap CPUs, and it is inevitable that sooner or later the Heatsink fan will fail or heat sink grease will harden. And how does one troubleshoot that, on a live router? That is the negative of a Linux self made Rack PC. But again, thats the reason for a hot spare router to put in place, and a reason for scheduled maintenance to occur every couple years after hours, when a 60 second outage is acceptable. As ISPs start to become gloabal ISPs opperating in multiple time zones, it becomes tougher, to find good times to do maintenance, but I dont think most WISPs are at that stage where it matters that much. When it does matter that much, I'd argue the WISP should have both hardware redundancy and router redundancy.
Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband

    ----- Original Message -----
    *From:* Josh Luthman <mailto:j...@imaginenetworksllc.com>
    *To:* WISPA General List <mailto:wireless@wispa.org>
    *Sent:* Wednesday, November 03, 2010 11:26 PM
    *Subject:* Re: [WISPA] Full BGP on RouterOS

    Powercode's MAXX does that...or so they say.  I believe
    ImageStream says they can do this too.

    Josh Luthman
    Office: 937-552-2340
    Direct: 937-552-2343
    1100 Wayne St
    Suite 1337
    Troy, OH 45373


    On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 9:53 PM, Travis Johnson <t...@ida.net
    <mailto:t...@ida.net>> wrote:

        Having two routers talking to each other is not the same as a
        single router with redundant parts. I can pull the CPU card
        from my Cisco and the box never misses a single packet because
        the 2nd CPU card is in the same box. Same with the route
        processor cards. Same with the power supplies.

        If you have two boxes doing VRRP, and BGP, if the power supply
        goes out of a box, how long before the 2nd box could fully
        take over? 30 seconds? 60 seconds? :(

        Travis
        Microserv



        On 11/3/2010 6:26 PM, Scott Reed wrote:
        OK, elaborate on how 2 distinct identical boxes is not
        hardware redundancy.  I think by the definition of
        redundancy, it is 100%. Webster: characterized by similarity
        or repetition <a group of particularly /redundant/ brick
        buildings

        On 11/3/2010 6:45 PM, Blake Covarrubias wrote:
        Jeff,

        VXRs and down. Not GSR's and up. I wasn't entirely clear in my last 
message. Like Travis I was also commenting about the Cisco GSR / 12000 
platform. I'm well aware of the performance of a Linux box compared to a VXR. 
We run a few VXR routers in our network in addition to GSR's, BSD routers, and 
MikroTik.

        What you're describing really isn't true hardware redundancy. I'm also 
well aware of BGP and its use in a multi-homed environment. We have two 
separate GSRs acting as our edge routers. One in California, one in Arizona. 
Both routers have multiple eBGP peers, and run iBGP between them. They're 
connected by a series of licensed microwave radios with about 155mbps of 
bandwidth between the two. We'll be supplementing that link with a dedicated 
GigE fiber link in the coming months.

        I'm not sure what you're getting at regarding bridging between two 
connections. There's no requirement to run a bridged network in order to 
operate iBGP.

        I have no doubt Quagga works well in some BGP applications. We don't use it 
because we have requirements for performance&  uptime which a Linux/BSD box 
cannot currently meet. We provide voice (TDM) and data services for companies in 
various industries such as mining, manufacturing, aerospace, defense, energy, 
cellular, and even other ISPs. We literally cannot afford to wrestle with the 
issues others on this list experience. If its not reliable we replace it. We don't 
have a problem paying for reliability.

        --
        Blake Covarrubias

        On Nov 3, 2010, at 1:16 PM, Jeff Broadwick - Lists wrote:

        Hi Blake,

        I’m not sure what sort of speeds you think Linux limits out at, but I 
believe you might be surprised at how much throughput you can get.  We 
generally blow the doors off of the VXRs and down.

        There are two different ways of getting hardware redundancy.  One is 
with a massively expensive single box, like the Cisco.  The other is to set up 
redundant hardware…which is particularly good in a BGP application.  You can 
have a relatively inexpensive router on each circuit, set up iBGP and VRRP 
between the boxes, and BGP between the peers.  That way, if you lose anything, 
all the in and outbound traffic fails to the other unit(s).  This also allows 
for geographic separation of the routers.  If you can bridge between the 
routers, you can have them in completely different locations…thus keeping your 
network running if something really nasty happens.

        I can’t speak for the other companies, but ImageStream has been 
handling BGP for around 10 years.  We use Quagga currently and we’ve found it 
to be very stable, as our customers on-list have attested.  It’s one of our top 
applications.

        Regards,

        Jeff
        ImageStream
        800-813-5123 x106

        From:wireless-boun...@wispa.org  <mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org>  
[mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Blake Covarrubias
        Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2010 11:31 AM
        To: WISPA General List
        Subject: Re: [WISPA] Full BGP on RouterOS

        Hardware redundancy, wire speed packet forwarding, support for more 
Interface types, and more widely tested&  stable software.

        I'll use a MikroTik, Linux, or BSD box as an aggregation router any day; 
terminate some VLANs, act as an MPLS CE, perform QoS marking, and participate in an 
OSPF area. Probably nothing more. The level of hardware redundancy&  wire-speed 
forwarding isn't there for my needs.

        If you're just knocking IOS, I realize it isn't the wave of the future. 
Cisco does too&  has developed IOS XR.

        Linux, MikroTik, and I'm sure Vyatta&  ImageStream are great platforms. 
They compete well with Cisco in some areas...others not so much. Use what's 
appropriate.

        --
        Blake Covarrubias

        On Nov 3, 2010, at 8:04, "Jeff Broadwick - Lists"<jeffl...@att.net>  
<mailto:jeffl...@att.net>  wrote:

        I’m curious Travis…not looking for an argument.

        What specifically do you think is superior in IOS (Unix-based 
originally) to a hardened, purpose-built Linux distro (us, Mikrotik, Vyatta, 
whatever)?

        Regards,

        Jeff
        ImageStream
        800-813-5123 x106

        From:wireless-boun...@wispa.org  <mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org>  
[mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of Travis Johnson
        Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2010 11:37 PM
        To: WISPA General List
        Subject: Re: [WISPA] Full BGP on RouterOS

        Tom,

        I agree that Linux works very well as a router, but it still doesn't
        compare to a dedicated hardware platform (like Cisco) that was built
        from the ground up to do nothing but routing. We purchased a used Cisco
        12008 router about 1.5 years ago off ebay. They are very, very cheap...
        the only downside is they are BIG and require 240VAC. But it's way cool
        to pull the CPU card while the router is moving 500Mbps of traffic and
        have it not even miss a single ping (due to the redundant CPU card).
        Same goes for the route fabric card. ;)

        We use Mikrotik for our inside "core" router and this big Cisco for our
        border router to our BGP upstreams. I have slept very well for the last
        1.5 years knowing everything in the box is fully redundant (CPU, route,
        power, etc.). :)

        Travis
        Microserv


        On 11/2/2010 9:04 PM, Tom DeReggi wrote:
        Note: Quagga has been very reliable for quite some time now. 
Imagestream and
        Vyatta both use Quagga. Both are great choices for BGP routers.

        I personally use Mandrake (Mandriva) Linux with a slew of custom
        modifications that we have made, loaded on SuperMicro, and then use 
latest
        Quagga.
        That has worked well for us, the last 5 years. (although, I dont 
recommend
        that to someone, until they are vastly familiar with their distro of 
Linux.
        Last thing you want to do is use your BGP router for a Guinee Pig 
Science
        project, rebooting it all the time to test script changes.) But once 
you are
        comfortable with your Distro, it works well.

        There are a million arguements "for" and "against" Cisco versus Linux, 
to be
        used for the ISPs' average NOC/POP router/switch. I dont dispute any of 
the
        arguements. But one area where I believe Linux stands tall, is as a 
CORE BGP
        router. A core BGP router can be one of the more simplistic configured
        routers because it only really needs to perform one function, BGP 
routing to
        its connected peers.  For BGP there are two critical needs.... Fast
        processors and Lots of RAM. In todays world there is no excuse to not 
have
        both of those.  The problem with Cisco is that it lacks both, unless 
you pay
        big bucks. Linux on the other hand has an abundance of both, when 
combined
        with PC-Like hardware.

           I laugh at my competitors, when they say, "oh no, BGP reset, had to 
reload
        BGP tables, now there is latency for like 3 minutes or compromised 
routing
        for that period" or "got a route problem, the small prefixes aren't in 
my
        tables". . On Linux, if you want to restart BGP, well thats like 1 
second to
        reload tables. And no need to drop any routes, unless you want to. You 
could
        have Full routes with like 30 peers from a single router, if you wanted 
to.
        You can load up Linux with like 32 NICs (qty8 4port GIG NICs) in a 2U 
case,
        if you want to, and dont even need a Switch. (Although new will cost you
        about $430 per 4port PCI-E Gig NIC).

        Tom DeReggi
        RapidDSL&   Wireless, Inc
        IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband


        ----- Original Message -----
        From: "Kristian Hoffmann"<kh...@fire2wire.com>  
<mailto:kh...@fire2wire.com>
        To: "WISPA General List"<wireless@wispa.org>  
<mailto:wireless@wispa.org>
        Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2010 8:37 PM
        Subject: Re: [WISPA] Full BGP on RouterOS


        On Tue, 2010-11-02 at 18:52 -0500, Scott Lambert wrote:

        I still need to try a Vyatta system.
        I loathe the idea of managing a *nix distro on a router (which is why we
        use RouterOS now).  Apparently I've had too much Tik-aid, because I had
        completely forgotten about Vyatta and similar options.

        I have a SuperMicro 5015A-H (Atom 330 dual-core) coming in tomorrow.
        I'm going to try RouterOS and Vyatta and see how BGP responds on each
        with a single feed.  If anyone else has an x86-based distro they'd like
        to see performance on, let me know.

        And thanks for all the responses.  The information has been very
        helpful.  Unfortunately, the conclusion I came to is "I have no idea
        what I'm going to do."  Cisco = $$$ and MikroTik = coin flip.  Hopefully
        Vyatta lands somewhere in the middle.

        Thanks,

        -Kristian



        
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        1-800-363-1544 x2241
        1-260-827-2241
        Cell: 260-273-7239




        
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