L3 capabilities of 3560e-12D

[mmacdonald70]

I am looking at setting up a new WAN connection for a client. This would involve redundant 2gb (could scale to 10GE) IpVPN connections using BGP for failover. I am assuming the the ISP will offer a 10GE links for the connection.

In order to save costs, I would like to stay away from the big iron (6500 etc...). Does anybody know how a 3560e-12D would scale in this situation? Would it be able to provide L3 routing and a small BGP table?

The network would look like this:

2 x 3650e-12D switches with a 10GE trunk between them. Each switch would be uplinked to an ISP router (10GE) and running BGP. Each switch would also be plugged into an ASA5580-40 (running A/S failover).

[lamav · Accepted solution]

Will those switches be accepting full Internet routing tables? Or is this a MP-BGP deployment over an MPLS cloud, in which the only BGP routes being learned would be the ones advertised by the remote site?

[EDIT] Just re-read and noticed that you said "small BGP table." Sorry. and yes, the 3560 does support layer 3 switching in its "IP Services" and "Advanced IP Services" feature sets.

It also has a relatively robust forwarding rate of 90 Mpps and the capability of having twelve 10-GBps connections, with an oversubscription rate of 2:1.

Given all this, but without specific experience using this set up, I would say that you should be OK. [EDIT]

[mmacdonald70]

Thanks for your answer. I assumed that it would work okay but just wanted a second opinon. Traffic levels will most likely be low for a while so we can monitor the system resources and upgrade if needed.

To clarify the "small BGP table", the ISP would most likely be sending us only a default route. If not, the IPVPN is for a small private network with only a few routes.

[lamav]

Good luck and thanks for the rating.