Question Router or Layer 3 Switch ?

[LittleCreekHosting]

This is a commercial setting in a data center but I do have a limited budget.

I will soon be getting a 10 Gb line. I am considering whether I should get a router or layer 3 switch. I don't want to have pay a recurring license fee. Any suggestions?

 

[kanewolf]

This is commercial setting in a data center but I do have a limited budget.

I will soon be getting a 10 Gb line. I am considering whether I should get a router or layer 3 switch. I don't want to have pay a recurring license fee. Any suggestions?

There is no way to answer this. A "10Gb line" is meaningless relative to layer 3.

 

[LittleCreekHosting]

I thought Layer 3 did routing?

 

[kanewolf]

I thought Layer 3 did routing?

It can. My point is a 10Gb line is a wire speed. It has nothing to do with IP or routing. You could have a T1 and have the same question.
I will say that it generally is the case that your firewall is where that 10GE line would go. How many public IP addresses are available determines what you do on that firewall. It might be NAT, it might be IP pass through, it might be load balancing.
If you have a cluster of firewalls, then you might need an L3 switch with WAN routing protocols (BGP, etc) to be the single entry point to your cluster of firewalls.
You have to ask your provider, what protocols you are required to support on your WAN edge.

 

[bill001g]

As mentioned above your technical needs will determine if you can use a l3 switch or need a actual router. It has become very blurry what if any difference there is. Generally the difference used to be what interface boards it could take and if it could run some of the very advanced network protocols like MPLS, which you generally would never use in a data center.

Be careful about going cheap espeically if you sell data center services to customers. Most the reason for monthly/yearly fees is for a service contract. Most actual commercial equipment you get no software patches or hardware failure support without it.
You can get contracts where they have someone on site to replace your equipment within hours. To some extent you could buy a spare switch you have ready to swap. You seldom get failures but you could lose your business if you get unlucky and could not get a replacement unit shipped in for 3 or 4 days.

 

[LittleCreekHosting]

Most the reason for monthly/yearly fees is for a service contract.

If I need a service contract incase of failure then I don't want the product. I have always had extra equipment on hand in case of failure.

Currently I have just a Linux router doing the routing on my 1Gb fiber line. But its showing signs of not being able to handle the traffic and run Snort at the same time. I would really like to build another Linux router that can handle the traffic. That would be simplest.

I only have public IPs. No NATing. The provider simply routes all 1275+ IPs to my router. No special protocols.

My point is a 10Gb line is a wire speed. It has nothing to do with IP or routing.

While that is of course true I still need a device that has 10Gb sfp ports. A switch or router that only has ethernet will do me no good.