Router recommendations - 2Gbit min throughput, HA, BGP4

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dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
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San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
I'm drowning in options and could use some help selecting a router or switch for a project.

I'm placing a small amount of pretty critical gear in colo directly connected to AWS with two 1Gbit fiber cross-connects. The traffic will be 1-4kb JMS messages at a very high rate - up to 90K messages/second peak - call it 2Gbits peak.

One end of the system terminates at an AWS router. The other end terminates at my colo cage, and I need a router. Technically, I need two routers since I'll have two AWS connections for redundancy and want HA. Requirements include:

1Gbit fiber port to AWS
2x Gigabit Base-T to the colo rack
Preferred if there are 8x Gigabit Base-T ports or more. That way I don't need a separate switch
BGP4 required. Private ASN only with a tiny routing table
HA between the two routers
Reliable since they'll be across the country
Low cost - used is OK. I'd like to spend <$4K total if possible, but could stretch if I need to

Candidates:
- Used Dell or HP switch with BGP4
- Mikrotik router
- Used Juniper or Cisco or? ... but which used models support >2Gbit throughput?
- Others?
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
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I don't have a clear recommendation for you, but here are a few things to consider:

- it is packets per second you need to consider, not bandwidth. Almost all recent generation routers can drive line rate tput but are limited by pps.
- seems like you will be driving mostly large packet traffic. Assuming your transactions fragment well you will be looking at 1-3 1500 byte packets per transaction. So assume 4 packets per transaction to be safe and allow for a bit of overhead.
- This puts you at about 360k pps.
- 360k pps is not a large number. Any of the router options you listed above should handle it.
- Given that - I'd go with a pair of the MikroTik cloud routers. They will give you the best support for BGP at a low price. They will come in well under your proposed budget.

You should also consider Virtualized router options. Assuming you will already have some virtualization capability in your Colo equipment this could be your best route. The Vyatta virtual router is awesome
 

markarr

Active Member
Oct 31, 2013
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You could also look at the Ubiquiti edge router. The ERPro-8 has 8 gig ports and two of them are dual personality. It supports most routing protocols, and can do vrrp for your ha. Most of the advanced stuff is via cli and is based off Vyatta.
 

wildchild

Active Member
Feb 4, 2014
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company wise we're having a pretty similar setup , also with amazon, and have great results with 2 ssg520m's running in nsrp active avtive mode. we added to both a 1gb fiber pim.
i would expect you should be able pick them up pretty cheap.
thing is that these will have most licensed options already activated by default.
if you are going to be running bgpv4 make sure you are using 6.3r17 ... if you need that let me know
 

Mike

Member
May 29, 2012
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EU
If latency is also an issue than the Arista dc line is unbeatable as far as I know. On the expensive side though.
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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I would probably get Juniper ____ you can almost just pick a model for that throughput and just need GBP.
 

azev

Well-Known Member
Jan 18, 2013
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I second PigLover on Vyatta virtual router. I have it running in my Colo as the main Router. It can do so many thing, and throughput is limited based on how much resource you give it, and best of all its "Free" :)
 

bds1904

Active Member
Aug 30, 2013
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As much as I like MikroTik, their CCR series just isn't ready for your requirements. Although you can get a 36 core 1.2GHz processor model, RouterOS6 just doesn't handle multi-core correctly. You are limited to 1Gbps for each thread and many many many features of RouterOS aren't multi-threaded yet. If RouterOS7 was out, I would say run with it.

Juniper is the way to go, I use a few of them at work and regularly see 60Gbps throughput & they aren't even breathing hard. Carrier grade hardware of course. JunOS is easy if you are used to cisco gear. I use Ciena, cisco, juniper and alcatel-lucent hardware at work, and the Juniper is by far my fav. Hint: 98% of it is -48VDC :D
 

wildchild

Active Member
Feb 4, 2014
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just mind juniper has 2 series.. junos ( still heavily in development) and the very much more mature screenos ( formerly netscreen) i prefer the latter, as i have been using it for years.
the good thing with the juniper ssg520m series is that you can run both screenos or junos, and that model comes with most license features enabled by default because it used to be their flagship.

you can get these on ebay, factory refurb for around 400, and thats nothing for a true enterprise router and statefull firewall
 

dba

Moderator
Feb 20, 2012
1,477
184
63
San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA
I'm drowning in options and could use some help selecting a router or switch for a project.

I'm placing a small amount of pretty critical gear in colo directly connected to AWS with two 1Gbit fiber cross-connects. The traffic will be 1-4kb JMS messages at a very high rate - up to 90K messages/second peak - call it 2Gbits peak.

One end of the system terminates at an AWS router. The other end terminates at my colo cage, and I need a router. Technically, I need two routers since I'll have two AWS connections for redundancy and want HA. Requirements include:

1Gbit fiber port to AWS
2x Gigabit Base-T to the colo rack
Preferred if there are 8x Gigabit Base-T ports or more. That way I don't need a separate switch
BGP4 required. Private ASN only with a tiny routing table
HA between the two routers
Reliable since they'll be across the country
Low cost - used is OK. I'd like to spend <$4K total if possible, but could stretch if I need to

Candidates:
- Used Dell or HP switch with BGP4
- Mikrotik router
- Used Juniper or Cisco or? ... but which used models support >2Gbit throughput?
- Others?

Thank you everyone for all of the advice. I struggled to find a Juniper on eBay that appeared to meet my needs for a good price. Same with Cisco. With a bit more patience I think that I could have found something. Miktrotik looked appealing for a time, but the software appears to be quite flaky and I didn't want to risk it. I did buy a pair of Ubiquiti Pro 8 routing switches running Vyatta, which were very inexpensive and quite easy to set up and had pretty good performance mostly. Then I lucked out by stumbling onto some HP E3800 L3 switches and picked up two for $1,100 each. That sounds like a lot, but these are 48 port 1G switches with 4x 10G fiber ports that have BGP routing, VRRP, multi-chassis LAG, and tons of other serious features. Unlike most routing switches, the routing features are included in the 3800 models, not an add-on license. The best part, however, is the lifetime warranty. One of my two purchased switches was DOA, so I rang up HP who shipped me a new one. Nice.
Note that while these switches have a nice web UI, when you get into routing, it's all command line interface.
 
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Lost-Benji

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Jan 21, 2013
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The arse end of the planet
I haven't gotten into the this whole thread too much but it was clear from the start, you are not messing around with a home network (or it could be the deep pockets in hardware you have in your sig).

I am surprised that there was no mention of Sophos or their UG's?