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RE: Yankee Group declares core routing obsolete (was Re: Anybodyusing GBICs?)

  • From: Deepak Jain
  • Date: Fri Oct 31 15:16:39 2003

.
>
> Things are getting better, but "L3-switches" pale in comparison to today's
> high-end routers on almost all fronts.  If you take GigE out of the
> equation, modern "L3 Switches" are just as expensive as modern "core
> routers" - and routable, "mpls-able" L3 GE ports are _more_ expensive on
> "switches" than "routers" (see 4xGE OSM vs 4xGE GSR 'tetra'
> pricing).  Media
> diversity, queuing performance, and FIB density is what really
> differentiates the two at this point, IMO.

[stuff deleted all over the place]

Christian,

I think you make the point very clearly, if you leave GigE in the equation
things change a lot. Without it, none of this stuff walks too far. GigE is
being used in all kinds of IX, LAN, and Metro environments that WAN circuits
or at best FE used to be used for. This reduces the number of low speed and
short-haul interfaces on most core routers immediately. 10GE still isn't a
very far reaching technology yet (meaning, I can't seem to find one stable
at > 26db) and SONET clearly wins in speed range for distance AFAIK.

For networks that can engineer or re-engineer to GE or nxGE an L3 switch is
going to do very well. Many support hardware rewrite for L2 forwarding, and
newer ones are sporting real-router sized FIBs. Even in an IX environment,
if you are only talking to peers, you can use an L3 switch with a 20,000
route FIB and know you'll never be defaulted to, and all of your BGP views
at least 100 sessions can be aggregated on a little 1U box that costs $4000.
You also protect your main router from a lot of nonsense that can be
hw-filtered on the little box.

If big routers could provide GE ports in higher densities at approximately
the same price per port as a switch, the argument would be a dead one. Its
expensive to privately (router) peer with 30 GE networks on a vendor J or
vendor C router. Its relatively inexpensive to do it using an L3 switch.
When talking about routers that need to aggregate lots of FR, ATM, or other
WAN traffic -- or generally uplinking at greater than GE speed interfaces,
you are probably better off [today] using a traditional router.

I don't think anyone uplinking at 10GE speeds doesn't have a fair about of
WAN connections. I don't think most people with lots of GE have many big
core routers. I think its a self-selecting type of arrangement.

Just my opinion,

Deepak Jain
AiNET