The EX2200 line of Juniper Ethernet switches are ideal for access-layer deployments in branch offices and campus networks, delivers a level of functionality and performance normally associated with higher-cost Ethernet switches. Also i’d say that they are capable of doing Datacenter workload. Anyway, i am planning on using those as Rackswitches over at my Rackhousing business.
Switching Performance
On my Macbook Pro i was running
netcat -l -p 12345 > /dev/null
On the other machine i used dd piping into netcat (2 independent runs):
$ dd if=/dev/zero count=1000 bs=1M | nc 10.0.0.235 12345
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 8.99109 s, 117 MB/s
2nd run:
$ dd if=/dev/zero count=1000 bs=1M | nc 10.0.0.235 12345
1000+0 records in
1000+0 records out
1048576000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 8.98447 s, 117 MB/s
Clearly you can see that both runs ended with 117MB/s which is full speed in my book. :)
Routing Configuration
Normaly an interface on an EX-Series switch is configured for ethernet-switching:
root@ex2200# show interfaces ge-0/0/0
unit 0 {
family ethernet-switching;
}
To set another family than ethernet-switching, you need to remove it first!
root@ex2200# delete interfaces ge-0/0/1 unit 0 family ethernet-switching
root@ex2200# delete interfaces ge-0/0/2 unit 0 family ethernet-switching
After that we set our IPs to the desired interfaces:
root@ex2200# set interfaces ge-0/0/1 unit 0 family inet address 10.0.0.1/24
root@ex2200# set interfaces ge-0/0/2 unit 0 family inet address 10.0.1.1/24
The show configuration command should show something like this:
root@ex2200# show interfaces ge-0/0/1
unit 0 {
family inet {
address 10.0.0.1/24;
}
}
root@ex2200# show interfaces ge-0/0/2
unit 0 {
family inet {
address 10.0.1.1/24;
}
}
Routing Performance
For routing performance, i want to be a bit more exact. iperf will do the trick. On the server (in my case Macbook Pro):
# iperf -s
On the other machine i run:
# iperf -c 10.0.1.5
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 10.0.1.5, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 10.0.0.5 port 41361 connected with 10.0.1.5 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 1.09 GBytes 933 Mbits/sec
I also tried this using 64 byte packets:
# iperf -c 10.0.1.5 -l 64
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 10.0.1.5, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 10.0.0.5 port 58634 connected with 10.0.1.5 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 619 MBytes 520 Mbits/sec
And also using 128 byte packets:
# iperf -c 10.0.1.5 -l 128
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 10.0.1.5, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 16.0 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 10.0.0.5 port 41361 connected with 10.0.1.5 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 1.09 GBytes 933 Mbits/sec
933Mbit/s with normal sized packets is perfect, the only thing it seems to dislike are small packets with 64 bytes in size. You can see that there i only got 520Mbit/s.
Conclusion
The EX-Series switches are a great replacement for any other 1GE switch, the only thing i am sad about is the Advanced Routing License you have to obtain from Juniper in Order to make this device work with protocols like OSPF or BGP.
Since now i have the basic Juniper CLI figured out, i will try some fancy stunts with the J2320 in the next few days.
Stay tuned!