Please go to my real site http://danno.appliedi.net/drupal/

This is the old spot, folks. I've got a fully functioning website (with blog, forums, gallery, etc.) at the following-

danno.appliedi.net/drupal/

Please take note that unless something substantially bad happens with my current employer... that's where this site will live on (and there's actually timely content there, too.)

Thanks for visiting here,

danno

snmp counters on multiple vlans within a trunk

daniel maresch recently asked a question on the mailing list about snmp monitoring of vlans.

this is a problem for the riverstones... they can really only monitor traffic counters per-port. when you monitor a vlan, the rs gives you the physical port's values. if you think this isn't working correctly... you're right. and yes, it can be frustrating.

normally what i have had to do is find where the vlans break out onto their own individual ports (maybe somewhere else on the network) and monitor those physical ports.

the tac guys said long ago that this wasn't a pressing issue for them, and that they had other issues to fix ahead of this one... it was about 2 years ago, so maybe a more current ros image has this issue fixed, but judging from daniel's question, it probably hasn't been.

RS sells a 15008 to PCCW and other news

I guess it's finally happening... they're selling their new, high powered 15008 edge routers...

here's the link to the article-

here's the company that bought it-
www.pccw.com

This is part of their strategy to hit the Asian market hard. It's my personal belief that they aren't concentrating on some of the low-hanging fruit domestically, but they seem to be executing overseas... to quote them-

Riverstone has also delivered Ethernet networks to China Telecom, China Railcom, China Netcom, Chunghwa Telecom and Hutchison Global Communications.


Also, this latest article was released... with all of the usual feedback at lightreading.com-
Riverstone HVPLS article.

The RS3000 ... 3rd Generation asics built-in, now replaced by the RS3100 and RS3200 (w/ 5th Gen asics.) Still a great router or switch. 

TECH ARTICLE- intro to HRT

HRT is one of the aspects of the Riverstone gear that you can manipulate and use effectively, but you won't find any documentation on it in the Users Guide. So I thought I might give a small intro on HRT and it's issues.

HRT is Riverstone's ability to move routing and flow setup off the CPU and onto the line cards themselves, significantly enhancing the performance of the CPU. HRT uses asics on each line card to store the entire route table generated by the CPU on each line card, so that route lookups for IP flows can happen on the line cards themselves. Then the HRT asic on the line card processes the flow itself, without involving the CPU. Without HRT in effect, every flow on the box must come through the CPU.

ASIC Generations and limitations

The asics that HRT in most Riverstones in use rely on fall generally into two categories, 3rd and 5th Generations. 3rd Generation asics have only 8mb of ram to store the routing table with, and this limits the table size to about 100k routes. 5th Generation asics have 16mb of ram, and thus have a capability of storing about 200k routes. If the asics receive more routes than they can handle, they shut down HRT.

The effect this difference in ram has on the other processes on the box isn't that significant, with the exception of BGP. 3rd Generation boxes running BGP need to keep their FIB below 100k routes so that HRT won't shut down. This can be a real nightmare if you are pushing a high packet rate and running BGP, and suddenly the CPU has to handle both responsibilities because HRT shut itself down.

Another 3rd Generation limitation on the use of HRT revolves around the application of ACL's. 3rd Generation hardware doesn't process ACL's; that job is left to the CPU. Depending on how you apply ACL's on an RS, HRT can be shutdown across some ports on the RS and every port on the RS. An ACL that is applied to an IP interface for inbound traffic only will disable HRT on the ports the interface belongs to. An ACL that is applied to an IP interace for outbound traffic will disable HRT on the entire RS. The impact this has on performance is relative to the packet or ip flow rate on the box. ACL's that are applied to the CPU only have no effect on HRT.

5th Generation hardware overcomes this limitation (when used with the CM5 and ROS 9.3+) and can handle ACL's in the hardware, relieving the CPU of the responsibility.

On a side note, while 5th generation asics are definitely much better (and more expensive) than their 3rd Gen counterparts, depending on a particular network's needs, 3rd Gen hardware can do the job just fine (look for the upcoming posts about RS as a firewall and BGP router, done on 3rd Gen gear.)

Welcome to Riverstone Networks Corner

Riverstone Networks makes some great routing/switching gear, and this blog is dedicated to furthering communication and social networking amongst the general Riverstone users community at large.


Feel free to post whatever comments you want about the company, it's gear, problems/issues, opinions, whatever.

While discussions on various subjects concerning Riverstone are encouraged here (business, corportate, general opinion, etc.), it's expected that the bulk of the content will be related to technical issues on the gear itself... so feel free to ask your tech (or any other) question here, and if you have an answer to a question posted here... answer away!


Riverstone Networks Corner





A few Disclaimers-
- This site is in no way controlled or influenced by Riverstone Networks Inc. This is an independent site not affliated with any company.
- This site has no immediate control over the statements, opinions, or information transmitted on this blog. If any entity has any issue/concern with any posted content, contact the moderator group immediately to discuss an acceptable resolution.