[Xorp-users] Anyone using XORP in live production environment with big traffic load?

[Charles Wyble]

Morten Pedersen wrote:
> I guess the header says it all.
>   

Hello Morten,

Indeed the header does sayit all. :)
> We are currently using a couple of Cisco 7206 for our BGP routing, but need to upgrade to something with more bandwith.

How much bandwidth are you currently supporting? How much are you 
planning to support?
>  Therefore, I was thinking about XORP as a cheaper alternative.

Xorp does seem like an interesting platform that provides a viable low 
cost alternative to Cisco/Juniper kit.

>  I am planning to go for a configuration with two identical servers for failover:
>
> One 2U server with:
> 2 x PCI Express x16
> 1 x PCI Express x8
>   
Not sure what the x16 and x8 mean in the above?

> 2 x 2 port 10Gbit fibre network cards
> 1 x quad 1Gbit ethernet network card
>   

So which would be your ingress? The 1Gbit cards?  Network core would be 
the 2 x 2 port 10Gbit cards = 40Gbps?

A bit more info about your current and desired setup would be most 
appreciated. :)

Are you going to run the server pair active/active or active/passive?


> My question is, will this be viable?

Hmmmm. Good question.  More and more Cisco kit is X86 processor based, 
running a Linux hypervisor. (like my ASA kit which is a 1GBPS network).
So I would say that a commodity hardware based router is viable. You 
might also want to check out adding some FPGA interface cards to the 
mix. Check out http://www.invea-tech.com/fpga/boards for some hardware 
which you may be interested in. I am currently in talks with this vendor 
for a service provider network I am building.

I am evaluating Quagga and Xorp for the management plane.
>  Also, should I go for AMD or Intel? 

Hmmmm. Well that's a very interesting question. Cisco went with Intel 
Xeon in the ASA. I prefer AMD kit myself. Naturally you will want 64bit 
CPU. Most likely dual proc/dual core. Also at least 2 gigs of high speed 
RAM. I would also recommend a solid state disk with a SCSI or SATA back 
plane. The popular server vendors may or may not offer this. You can buy 
the enterprise grade SSD from 3rd party manufacturers.  Let me know if 
you want a contact.

You could also go the ramdisk route. Throw in say 4 or 6 gigs of RAM. 
That would be incredibly fast and power efficient.

> I need to keep in mind that my servers must be able to handle around 50Gbit of network traffic, 

Hence the 2x2 10Gbps fiber ports I presume.

> so the choice of databus is important I guess. Another issue is the network cards. I am planning on using Intel network cards.
>   

I hear good things about them. Might be best to search around on the 
mailing lists and poke through the driver source code of the 10gbps 
cards before making the choice.
> Anyone with some ideas on this?
>   

I think I qualify. Haha! :)
> Thanks,
>
> Morten
>   

Thank you for starting a very interesting thread.

Charles Wyble (818) 280 - 7059
http://charlesnw.blogspot.com
CTO Known Element Enterprises / SoCal WiFI project