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Design-A-Switch
| Posted by nik martin, 09-27-2012, 04:59 PM |
| Ok, this one is for you, the WHT community:
I have recently started a company building Service Provider specific (as opposed to Enterprise) server hardware. The CEO of the company was the founder and chief architect of N-Tron. He recently sold his company, and got bored counting his cash, so we started another company. He knows everything ther is to know about switching. His industrial switches power every GE gas turbine power generation plant made since 1999. My background is in all forms of hosting. We are thinking about building a switch specifically for the hosting environment. We're looking at a sub $10k fixed port count switch, probably 48 ports, with 4 SFPs, maybe a fixed pair of 10G ports, one of which can be used for stacking. It will do all the things service providers need it to. That's where you come in. What doe this switch need to do for less than $10k? My list to start off:
48 1 Gbps Ethernet ports4 SFPs in parallel with ports 45-482 10G ports.Full Layer 34096 VLANsOSPFBGP (full route table?)QOSIngress/Egress limiting and filtering at the VLAN levelsflow per port and per VLANArm or Atom powered, standard DIMMsUSB key storageRedundant Hot Swap PSU
Anything else? What does it NOT need to do (RIP, OSPF, NAT, etc.)
I will compile this list, and if anyone would like more input, PM me.
This is a real thing.
Last edited by nik martin; 09-27-2012 at 05:04 PM.
Reason: Bogus list item
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| Posted by Microlinux, 09-27-2012, 07:00 PM |
| A FESX-448 will do all this much cheaper. Why should I buy your switch?
The real question is not what fluffy features you offer, but what kind of performance you are talking about.
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| Posted by Server Management, 09-27-2012, 07:36 PM |
| I agree with this aswell...
Also theirs likely several others on the market which can do more of the less for a lower price.
What experience do you both have with building hardware for the hosting industry?
Regards,
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| Posted by nik martin, 09-28-2012, 02:54 PM |
| That's a great question!
The CEO has been a designer and manufacturer of industrial Ethernet switches for over 10 years. His switches provide deterministic delivery of control network traffic for the largest gas turbine power generation plants and nuclear power plants in the world from GE. He knows switching like nobody's business.
I came from the service provider industry, so I claim to know a bit about ISP networks and server platforms for Service Providers
So I'll add to the list that it needs to be < $10k
Thanks!
EDIT: We're also on the Intel "Inside Look" program, so we get access to reference designs like this all the time. This just came across today, so this may be a starting point for us! 48 10G sfp ports + 2 40G modules!
Last edited by nik martin; 09-28-2012 at 03:02 PM.
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| Posted by nik martin, 09-28-2012, 02:57 PM |
| Performance is a feature in my book, so tell me what you'd expect from a switch that is cheaper than what you currently use.
2 Mpps? 5 Mpps? 50?
The free market tells me that if there's only one or two switches that meet the price/performance specs that small to midsize providers, need, the we should meet that need.
I appreciate the feedback!
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