North American Network Operators Group

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Re: opinions on routers/switches for parallel clusters

  • From: Jonathan Disher
  • Date: Mon Jun 18 15:40:31 2001

On Mon, 18 Jun 2001, Albert Meyer wrote:

> 
> Having dealt with Lucent I can warn you away from them (as if I need to 
> nowadays). Having dealt with Cabletron I can warn you away from Riverstone. 
> The only company you mention which has consistently provided excellent 
> products and support (and never screwed me around or lied to me) is Cisco. 
> Their stuff is a bit overpriced, but <cliche> you get what you pay for. 
> </cliche>

I've got a pair of ExtremeNetworks BlackDiamond 6808's running my
production datacenter installation (2 8 port gig blades, 1 12 port gig
blade, and 4 32 port 100TX blades each), and I love them to death.  They
just work (tm).

-j

> At 11:15 AM 6/18/01 -0500, [email protected] wrote:
> 
> >Hi Everyone,
> >
> >We are an educational institution looking into building
> >a scientific computing cluster that has 128-256 nodes
> >interconnected by gigE.  The outward connection would
> >be the site FDDI ring.
> >
> >The problem is that we want to experiment with the topology
> >as well as the computing part. :)  And I am at a loss
> >as to what gigE switch and router we should use.
> >
> >The requirements are:
> >1. ability to morph the topology at will
> >2. fast (doh!)
> >3. Layer 1-4 is required (up to layer 7 would be nice)
> >4. load balancing
> >
> >Which companies' products do you like? (*Barring* Cisco)
> >[If you cannot state your opinion publicly, please send me a
> >private reply.  I appreciate it and will keep it confidential.)
> >
> >I am looking at these companies:
> >Lucent
> >Foundey Networks
> >River Stone
> >Alteon
> >Extreme Networks
> >Ericcson
> >
> >Would the people who have had experience with these products
> >tell me what they feel?  Thank you very much.
> >
> >Michael
> >--
> >+-----------------------------------------------------------+
> >| [email protected]         | [email protected]       |
> >| http://iteration.net/~keichii | Yes, BSD is a conspiracy. |
> >+-----------------------------------------------------------+
> 

-- 
-Jonathan Disher
-Sr. Systems and Network Engineer, Web Operations
-Internet Pictures Corporation, Palo Alto, CA
-[v] (650) 388-0497 | [p] (877) 446-9311 | [e] [email protected]