Sirhc's Best Practices with EdgeRouters/Netonix Switches

[nelson05]

In reviewing various posts and watching the movie Chris produced on the setup he has found to work best, I had a couple of questions I was hoping to clarify since some time has passed from the time the information was originally produced.

· Given the EdgeRouter platform now supports Flow Control- I am assuming the guidance on enabling it on the Cisco routers applies to the EdgeRouters as well (in my case I am looking at using the EdgePoint R-8)?
· Since the EdgePoint-R8s also support High Power Output on two ports, would it make sense to just connect the backhaul radios directly to the it at tower sites rather than using the Netonix switches as pseudo midspans and burning up four ports on the switch? Any downsides? I assume you can set ping watchdogs and power cycle these ports if not responsive as you can with the Netonix switches?
· LACP – this is probably the primary question I am really looking for guidance on. In enabling it on the EdgeRouter, from what I read on the forums, it appears as though it disables offloading. Is the benefit when it comes to pause frames generated by half duplex APs being spread out over several interfaces on the EdgeRouter enough to justify the loss of offloading? Is there another way to tackle the issue such as utilizing some more of the ports on the R8 with direct connections to the Netonix and with VLANs distributing various APs across those individual interfaces?
· BFD- With 1.8 I see the EdgeRouter now supports BFD. Again, just verifying the same advice applies with your Cisco based network in activating it on the EdgeRouters and whether you had updated your network to utilize the ERs now that FC and BFD are supported?
Any other updates to ‘best practices’? Really appreciate you taking the time to share what works for you as we have definitely benefitted from your hard work. Looking forward to making some of these questions irrelevant when you finally are ready to unveil the Netonix L3 switch/router that integrates all of this…. In the meantime though need to get some of our towers updated.

Thanks again!

[jjonsson]

I have FC enabled all the way through my network. On all PtP links, AP's and EdgeRouters. The network runs very well, even though I have mix of 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps enabled interfaces....

I love the combination of using the Netonix switch to power my EdgeRouter X

[nelson05]

Thanks for the feedback. How about LACP? And BFD?

Are you routed at every tower? Also curious if you have had any of the issues related to AF FC storms?

[jjonsson]

I have a lot of Pause Frames on my AF5/24 links. But they haven't done any harm yest, as far as I can tell.

I'm working on enabling BFD. I just need to be able to upgrade my Internet facing router from v1.7 to v1.8.5. I can't do that at the moment because I have som PBR I can't get to work on v1.8.5. Need to solve that first. OSFP without is working pretty good. 20 seconds and link is rerouted...

[nelson05]

Got it... how about LACP out of curiosity? Hoping Chris can chime in on this as well at some point as he is the architect/promoter of this particular configuration.