Nortel PP8600 Core 4

[Whitebellybob]

I have to decide to accept a Nortel network solution or an Extreme Black Diamond 6800 Netowrk solution. Our new network will have 2 Cores cross connected to 28 telecom rooms scattered over miles of our campus. Does anyone have comments that would be helpful to me? We are currently a Cisco Shop, no one on my staff has experience with Nortel or Extreme.

 

[eurobadger]

Hi Bob

I don't know Black Diamond at all but the 8600 is a good reliable product, and the Nortel management software tools are excellent.

However I am not sure I would want to learn another manufacturer's way of doing things, having become familiar with Cisco, or indeed to go away from Cisco's (far superior) support.

EB

 

[Dualie]

we have 3 8600's across our enterprise and they are rock solid units. running multiple vlans, mlt's, multicast, tagging etc. so far so good.

 

[ZachBenj]

We run 10 8600's through out our enterprise and we love them all. We run what Split MLT to 450 stack which our servers our plugged into. I think in Cisco terms the MLT is called ether channel. A Split MLT is done between 2 8600's to a device. For us the device is a stack of switches that holds our servers. If one 8600 goes down whoever is still up on the other 8600 still has access to the servers. We have had no major issues with our 8600's and uptime is 99.99%.

My suggestions are what I would try myself. If incorrect, I welcome corrections to my knowledge.
Scott
stomlin@baptistfirst.org

 

[telecom116]

I have three 8600s as core switches and as a part of a metro dark fiber ring. Very stable and about 1/2 the cost per port of an equivelent Cisco switch.

With the 3.5 software, you will gain hitless switchover between the redundant 8600 CPUs. The just-released 3.7 software takes it further to caching route tables between the two switch fabrics so routes don't have to be relearned; hitless upgrade is planned for a 4Q or 1Q 2005 release (per engineers at the Nortel conference this month).

To me, I don't like putting all of my eggs in the Cisco IOS basket. If there is a new IOS hole found, at least you don't have to worry about your core switching fabric.

 

[netmanrick]

Cisco makes execellent equipment(just as Nortel does).
I prefer open standards rather than Vendor only solutions.
That's why we have stayed with Nortel.
The 8600 is a great piece of gear.

Rick Harris
SC Dept of Motor Vehicles
Network Operations

 

[anthonyanderberg]

A while back I evaluated a Cisco 6500, a Black Diamond 6800, a Nortel 8600, an Allied Telesyn SwitchBlade 4000, an HP ProCurve 9300, and a Foundry FastIron 400 side by side. Extreme also has a Black Diamond 10K that I was interested in, but our rep couldn't get one for me to look at.

A little background: Once upon a time we used IBM ATM equipment in our core and migrated to Nortel's 8600 platforms when they first came out. We've been very happy with them but when the 3 year leases started to expire earlier this year I wanted to make sure we knew what our options were. I don't have time or space to replicate all my test notes but here are a few (random) thoughts:

First we chose Nortel again, partially because of aggressive pricing offered and partially to avoid retraining staff. Good experiences with stability, the local support team, and features like SMLT also helped. I didn't have any experience with the other platforms, except for some familiarity with Cisco's ISO because our WAN routers are Cisco models.

We don't do anything too exotic, so all of the platforms passed all of my tests. The only platform I had technical issues with was the SwitchBlade 4000 which seemed to have an unusual architecture that I'd avoid for a generation or two. In general I ignored the vendor-supplied performance numbers since they all use Enron-style math when reporting speeds and performance.

I thought the BlackDiamond had the best interface in terms of usability, even better than our Passport 8600 for a new user. On the flip side I thought the Catalyst 6500 had the worst interface for a new user, I just don't think an interface designed for a 4 port router works on a 300 port core switch. The HP 9300 and the Foundry FastIron 400 are really the same hardware, the HP blades even say Foundry on them.

My specific notes on BlackDiamond vs Passport are that the BlackDiamond CPU failover was very fast and that it supported netFlow traffic monitoring. I hear Nortel plans to support IPFIX traffic monitoring in the future, probably as an add-in blade. On the negative side it only has 24 port 1000Mbps TX blades with no higher densities planned, the BD10K has 60 port blades and there may be a 48 port 1000 Mbps TX card for the Passport 8600 port later this year. The BlackDiamond also can't mirror between blades, which makes monitoring fiber interfaces hard. We were also a little concerned about Extreme being a smaller company that hasn't made much in the way of profits, but they seem to have good engineering and their local support team was really good to work with. I was also a little concerned about the future of the 6800 platform now that they've released the 10000 series.

In general I'd say they are both strong choices, certainly the strongest two out of the field of switches I looked at. I gave the edge to Nortel in our environment but after seeing them have recommended Extreme's Black Diamond and Summit lines to friends with smaller networks. HP's ProCurve 2626 and 2824 almost beat out Nortel's BayStack 425 and 5510 for our workgroup switch business, they're certainly worth a look as well.

 

[rjenk]

Several years ago when our facility was migrating from ATM to Gbit, we narrowed our search down to Cisco's 6500 and Nortel's 8600. After putting the devices through their paces, we chose the 8600's. I have two 8600's in the core with a combination of 8100's, BPS2000 stacks with 450's and some 470's. The 8600's have been rock solid. The only failure that I have encountered in around 3+ years of service is a fan tray.

One of the deciding factors for us was the ability to utilize Split MLT so that we would have as much redundancy as possible. This was important as we were planning a migration to VoIP and being a healthcare environment, downtime is grounds for being buried under the hospital.

I have worked with Cisco, Nortel and Extreme and I can honestly say that I like Nortel the best. Management is top notch and when I encountered a software glitch, I had a custom version to correct the problem within 24-hour.

The 8600 is an awesome box with unlimited capabilities…you won’t be sorry.

 

[CogGen]

Bob,

We at the moment have 60 8600's deployed in our campus and are utilizing them in many ways (Core, Edge and Access switches running 3.5 code. At the moment we are deploying DWDM right to our core 8600's and its been a great success.

I have to agree with everyone on this post the 8600 is a great box and you won't regret your decision

Cog