I have honed my skills on a wide variety of areas over the past fifteen years. Networking is one area where I have spent a lot of time in in the last 6 years or so, specifically layer 3 networks. I have designed three networks to date, the first was the biggest, nearly 3,000 GbE ports, the more recent two were significantly smaller, combined probably 900 ports, most being GbE.
For layer 3 switching environments my vendor of choice is Extreme Networks. I like them for many reasons(as the others on this blog can testify I could go on all afternoon about them), but one of them is ease of use, and I wanted to illustrate this concept which seems to elude so many enterprise networking vendors out there.
In this case I will pick on Juniper, because I have been talking with them as well about replacing our aging Cisco infrastructure with something better. Though the whole network refresh idea was prompted by very poor quality Dell PowerConnect 6448 switches.
But back on topic, I use Juniper here because most people probably know Cisco, not as many are familiar with how Juniper does things. I am not trying to knock their complexity specifically, this is a more generic complaint that I am using them to illustrate.
So I asked a network engineer who is very good at Juniper’s JunOS product to tell me what commands are needed for two very simple, yet common tasks, using their EX4200 stacking switch as the platform of choice.
Task 1
Create an 802.3ad port grouping with the first four ports on a switch which uses layer 3 (optionally layer 4) information for load balancing
Juniper JunOS Commands (17 commands)
set chassis aggregated-devices ethernet device-count 1 del interfaces ge-0/0/1 unit 0 del interfaces ge-0/0/2 unit 0 del interfaces ge-0/0/3 unit 0 del interfaces ge-0/0/4 unit 0 set interfaces ge-0/0/1 ether-options 802.3ad ae0 set interfaces ge-0/0/2 ether-options 802.3ad ae0 set interfaces ge-0/0/3 ether-options 802.3ad ae0 set interfaces ge-0/0/4 ether-options 802.3ad ae0 set interfaces ae0 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk set interfaces ae0 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members all set interfaces ae0 unit 0 family ethernet-switching native-vlan-id 1 set interfaces ae0 aggregated-ether-options lacp active ( if lacp is desired )
Extreme XOS Commands (1 command)
enable sharing 1 grouping 1-4 algorithm address-based L3_L4
Task 2
TASK: Create two VLANs with the following properties and enable layer 3 routing between them:
VLAN 1: IP: 10.200.50.1/24 TAG: 1250 Ports: Tagged: 1,2,3,4,6,8,10,11,12,13,29,30,32,33 Untagged: 35,36
VLAN 2: IP: 10.200.51.1/24 TAG: 1251 Ports: Tagged: 1,2,3,4,6,8,10,11,12,13,29,30,32,33 Untagged: 37,38
Juniper JunOS Commands (54 commands)
set vlans vlan1 description “First VLAN”
set vlans vlan1 vlan-id 1250
set vlans vlan1 l3-interface vlan.1250
set interfaces vlan unit 1250 family inet address 10.200.50.1/24
set vlans vlan2 description “Second VLAN”
set vlans vlan2 vlan-id 1251
set vlans vlan2 l3-interface vlan.1251
set interfaces vlan unit 1251 family inet address 10.200.51.1/24
set interfaces ge-0/0/1 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/1 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/1 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/2 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/2 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/2 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/3 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/3 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/3 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/4 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/4 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/4 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/6 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/6 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/6 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/8 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/8 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/8 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/10 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/10 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/10 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/11 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/11 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/11 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/12 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/12 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/12 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/13 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/13 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/13 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/29 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/29 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/29 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/30 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/30 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/30 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/32 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/32 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/32 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/33 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/33 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/33 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/35 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/36 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1250
set interfaces ge-0/0/37 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
set interfaces ge-0/0/38 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members 1251
Extreme XOS Commands (12 commands)
create vlan test1 config test1 tag 1250 config test1 ipaddress 10.200.50.1/24 config test1 add ports 1,6,8,10-13,29,30,32,33 tagged config test1 add ports 35-36 enable ipforwarding test1 create vlan test2 config test2 tag 1251 config test2 ipaddress 10.200.51.1/24 config test2 add ports 1,6,8,10-13,29,30,32,33 tagged config test2 add ports 35-36 enable ipforwarding test2
You can see in the case with the XOS commands that for the most part you can get an idea what the commands do, even if you don’t know much about networking, not so with JunOS (in my opinion), same applies to IOS.
Extreme switches allow me to do other things than focus on the network, they work great, they are really easy to manage, fast as can be, and lower cost than the competition. Faster, better, cheaper, usually your only supposed to
be able to pick two out of three. I’ve been using them in production for the better part of the last decade, from the Summit 48, 48si, Summit 400, Summit X450A/E, and the Black Diamond 10808.
As illustrated here, network management doesn’t have to be all that complicated. In the future I will try to give an overview of other technologies I have used to make things simpler such as ESRP which is my favorite network protocol, can you imagine adding full layer 3 protection to a VLAN with only a single command?