Low voltage server/appliance for bird.
Hello, I am looking for a 1U rack platform with 1x or 2x psu with low power consumption for a bird-based bgp router (Ubuntu). The supported traffic is expected to be ~1-2Gbps. Can anyone recommend a tested solution? Thank you in advance. Mike
Hello Mike :) On Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 at 10:55 AM, Mike Neo <neomikemac@gmail.com> wrote:
I am looking for a 1U rack platform with 1x or 2x psu with low power consumption for a bird-based bgp router (Ubuntu). The supported traffic is expected to be ~1-2Gbps. Can anyone recommend a tested solution?
That will depend heavily of how many routes it needs to hold and how many routing updates it will need to process. (bird is part of the control plane, it does not play any role in the actual forwarding of packets so throughput is not really relevant to bird) Important questions would be, is it expected to hold and process a full Internet routing table? How many peers / transit providers are expected ? Handling more than gigabit-ish will require either a fast CPU or some sort of data-plane hardware acceleration, the former competing with the need for low power consumption, while the latter might not be easy to pull off using a general purpose operating system. As for an appliance recommendation, I've been very satisfied with the Traverse Ten64 which probably meets your requirements: https://www.crowdsupply.com/traverse-technologies/ten64 Cheers!
1-2 gbps can easily be routed by scrap like LGA775 core2. 4 gbps is successfully routed by old xeon X3420 (even conntrack is enabled) any fresh Atom/Pentium N (or ULV CPU) can easily route 1-2 gbps. On 11/13/24 13:38, mirsal wrote:
Hello Mike :)
On Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 at 10:55 AM, Mike Neo <neomikemac@gmail.com> wrote:
I am looking for a 1U rack platform with 1x or 2x psu with low power consumption for a bird-based bgp router (Ubuntu). The supported traffic is expected to be ~1-2Gbps. Can anyone recommend a tested solution? That will depend heavily of how many routes it needs to hold and how many routing updates it will need to process. (bird is part of the control plane, it does not play any role in the actual forwarding of packets so throughput is not really relevant to bird) Important questions would be, is it expected to hold and process a full Internet routing table? How many peers / transit providers are expected ?
Handling more than gigabit-ish will require either a fast CPU or some sort of data-plane hardware acceleration, the former competing with the need for low power consumption, while the latter might not be easy to pull off using a general purpose operating system.
As for an appliance recommendation, I've been very satisfied with the Traverse Ten64 which probably meets your requirements: https://www.crowdsupply.com/traverse-technologies/ten64
Cheers!
2-3 peers with full Internet routing table, but the number of routes and traffic is only a matter of equipment parameters, while the key is the manufacturer, who does things like e.g. https://www.amazon.pl/HUNSN-Firewall-Appliance-Redundancy-RJ54k/dp/B0CST1BNL... It's about a good and tested supplier who delivers equipment in a quality that guarantees failure-free operation, and not that it will stop working after 6 months :) Thanks śr., 13 lis 2024 o 13:16 Andrew <nitr0@seti.kr.ua> napisał(a):
1-2 gbps can easily be routed by scrap like LGA775 core2. 4 gbps is successfully routed by old xeon X3420 (even conntrack is enabled)
any fresh Atom/Pentium N (or ULV CPU) can easily route 1-2 gbps.
On 11/13/24 13:38, mirsal wrote:
Hello Mike :)
On Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 at 10:55 AM, Mike Neo < neomikemac@gmail.com> wrote:
I am looking for a 1U rack platform with 1x or 2x psu with low power consumption for a bird-based bgp router (Ubuntu). The supported traffic is expected to be ~1-2Gbps. Can anyone recommend a tested solution? That will depend heavily of how many routes it needs to hold and how many routing updates it will need to process. (bird is part of the control plane, it does not play any role in the actual forwarding of packets so throughput is not really relevant to bird) Important questions would be, is it expected to hold and process a full Internet routing table? How many peers / transit providers are expected ?
Handling more than gigabit-ish will require either a fast CPU or some sort of data-plane hardware acceleration, the former competing with the need for low power consumption, while the latter might not be easy to pull off using a general purpose operating system.
As for an appliance recommendation, I've been very satisfied with the Traverse Ten64 which probably meets your requirements: https://www.crowdsupply.com/traverse-technologies/ten64
Cheers!
usual desktop MBs works for 10+ years in 24/7 (maybe - requiring capacitors replacement, but it was an old scrap with plain electrolytic capacitors, not modern boards with polymer capacitors). and main troubles were usually with PSUs. anyway, BGP allows redundancy, and RR cluster with simple backbone routing (RIP/OSPF) for default route propagation makes single device failure effect negligible. and the most important thing in softrouters are NICs - I recommend Intel ones. also, it'll be good to run it on some embedded distro (we are using LEAF) which works from ramdisk - it'll reduce risk of data corruption on power loss because storage is mounted only at boot time, or when configs are saved. On 11/13/24 18:42, Mike Neo wrote:
2-3 peers with full Internet routing table, but the number of routes and traffic is only a matter of equipment parameters, while the key is the manufacturer, who does things like e.g.
https://www.amazon.pl/HUNSN-Firewall-Appliance-Redundancy-RJ54k/dp/B0CST1BNL...
It's about a good and tested supplier who delivers equipment in a quality that guarantees failure-free operation, and not that it will stop working after 6 months :)
Thanks
śr., 13 lis 2024 o 13:16 Andrew <nitr0@seti.kr.ua> napisał(a):
1-2 gbps can easily be routed by scrap like LGA775 core2. 4 gbps is successfully routed by old xeon X3420 (even conntrack is enabled)
any fresh Atom/Pentium N (or ULV CPU) can easily route 1-2 gbps.
On 11/13/24 13:38, mirsal wrote: > Hello Mike :) > > On Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 at 10:55 AM, Mike Neo <neomikemac@gmail.com> wrote: >> I am looking for a 1U rack platform with 1x or 2x psu with low power consumption for a bird-based bgp router (Ubuntu). The supported traffic is expected to be ~1-2Gbps. Can anyone recommend a tested solution? > That will depend heavily of how many routes it needs to hold and how many routing updates it will need to process. (bird is part of the control plane, it does not play any role in the actual forwarding of packets so throughput is not really relevant to bird) Important questions would be, is it expected to hold and process a full Internet routing table? How many peers / transit providers are expected ? > > Handling more than gigabit-ish will require either a fast CPU or some sort of data-plane hardware acceleration, the former competing with the need for low power consumption, while the latter might not be easy to pull off using a general purpose operating system. > > As for an appliance recommendation, I've been very satisfied with the Traverse Ten64 which probably meets your requirements: https://www.crowdsupply.com/traverse-technologies/ten64 > > Cheers! >
Hoi Mike, colleagues,
On Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 at 10:55 AM, Mike Neo<neomikemac@gmail.com> wrote:
I am looking for a 1U rack platform with 1x or 2x psu with low power consumption for a bird-based bgp router (Ubuntu). The supported traffic is expected to be ~1-2Gbps. Can anyone recommend a tested solution? If you're willing to run VPP on Ubuntu (or Debian) can be done on very low power machines and at surprising throughput. Take a look at for example this ~18 Watt machine: https://ipng.ch/s/articles/2024/07/05/review-r86s-jasper-lake-n6005/ Or a rack mountable ~22 Watt machine: https://ipng.ch/s/articles/2024/08/03/review-gowin-1u-2x25g-alder-lake-n305/
Both of these machines are very affordable, rack mountable (in the case of R86S with a rack-mount kit), and route 10G+ with full BGP tables. The articles also go into some detail on the machine and CPU specs, and how those intersect with DPDK and VPP forwarding. groet, Pim -- Pim van Pelt<pim@ipng.ch> PBVP1-RIPE -https://ipng.ch/
Thank you. The equipment looks good but Gowin website has a lot of 404 errors - how long has this equipment/manufacturer been on the market?? What about infrastructure security? Kind regards, Mike śr., 13 lis 2024 o 18:56 Pim van Pelt <pim@ipng.ch> napisał(a):
Hoi Mike, colleagues,
On Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 at 10:55 AM, Mike Neo <neomikemac@gmail.com> <neomikemac@gmail.com> wrote:
I am looking for a 1U rack platform with 1x or 2x psu with low power consumption for a bird-based bgp router (Ubuntu). The supported traffic is expected to be ~1-2Gbps. Can anyone recommend a tested solution?
If you're willing to run VPP on Ubuntu (or Debian) can be done on very low power machines and at surprising throughput. Take a look at for example this ~18 Watt machine: https://ipng.ch/s/articles/2024/07/05/review-r86s-jasper-lake-n6005/ Or a rack mountable ~22 Watt machine: https://ipng.ch/s/articles/2024/08/03/review-gowin-1u-2x25g-alder-lake-n305/
Both of these machines are very affordable, rack mountable (in the case of R86S with a rack-mount kit), and route 10G+ with full BGP tables. The articles also go into some detail on the machine and CPU specs, and how those intersect with DPDK and VPP forwarding.
groet, Pim
-- Pim van Pelt <pim@ipng.ch> <pim@ipng.ch> PBVP1-RIPE - https://ipng.ch/
On Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 at 5:56 PM, Pim van Pelt via Bird-users <bird-users@network.cz> wrote:
On Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 at 10:55 AM, Mike Neo <neomikemac@gmail.com> wrote:
I am looking for a 1U rack platform with 1x or 2x psu with low power consumption for a bird-based bgp router (Ubuntu). The supported traffic is expected to be ~1-2Gbps. Can anyone recommend a tested solution?
If you're willing to run VPP on Ubuntu (or Debian) can be done on very low power machines and at surprising throughput. Take a look at for example this ~18 Watt machine: https://ipng.ch/s/articles/2024/07/05/review-r86s-jasper-lake-n6005/ Or a rack mountable ~22 Watt machine: https://ipng.ch/s/articles/2024/08/03/review-gowin-1u-2x25g-alder-lake-n305/
Both of these machines are very affordable, rack mountable (in the case of R86S with a rack-mount kit), and route 10G+ with full BGP tables. The articles also go into some detail on the machine and CPU specs, and how those intersect with DPDK and VPP forwarding.
Yes, DPDK+VPP is a great way to achieve impressive throughput on very low power hardware, some of which could even be considered e-waste by today's standards. It behaves in about the same way as an accelerated data-plane, so it adds some complexity compared to using operating-system-provided network stacks, but in my humble opinion it is very much worth it, especially with tools like linux-cp which make deploying VPP along with bird pretty much seamless. cheers! -- mirsal
participants (4)
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Andrew -
Mike Neo -
mirsal -
Pim van Pelt