[POC] Use Juniper Firefly Perimeter to support RTBH BGP scale with 120 BGP Peers

As Juniper FIREFLY-PERIMETER is an ideal candidate of virtual router solution for RTBH router, because its just need control plane and memory(it will not be limited by hardware) for BGP exchange route with community. No much data forwarding plane packet process was needed.

So I rebuild the lab with Juniper firefly to see the difference with physical routers as below topology.

In my vmware workstation lab, I assigned two interface to each firefly, ge-0/0/0 was used for BGP connections and ge-0/0/1 was used for SSH purpose only(to be more easier for config copy/paste.

The most obviously advantage of firefly is the response time of commit action, it was almost done immediately after you press Enter key when I initialized the configuration clean-up, its great!
...But after I copy & paste all my configurations to it then the response time still became longer.

[edit]
lab@FIREFLY-PERIMETER-1# run show chassis hardware
Hardware inventory:
Item             Version  Part number  Serial number     Description
Chassis                                22cbfad3dcef      FIREFLY-PERIMETER
Midplane       
System IO      
Routing Engine                                           FIREFLY-PERIMETER RE
FPC 0                                                    Virtual FPC
 PIC 0                                                  Virtual GE
Power Supply 0

[edit]
lab@FIREFLY-PERIMETER-1# run show chassis forwarding
FWDD status:
  State                                 Online   
  Microkernel CPU utilization        28 percent
  Real-time threads CPU utilization   0 percent
  Heap utilization                   21 percent
  Buffer utilization                  3 percent
  Uptime:                               15 hours, 10 minutes, 32 seconds 

I think Firefly is a great candidate for this kind of role(BGP Route Reflector), without much forwarding traffic pass-through, so you don't need to concern the forwarding performance.
It works just for BGP signaling and routing sustain so it can always keep low CPU loading.

lab@FIREFLY-PERIMETER-2# run show bgp summary | match 0/0/0/0 | count
Count: 120 lines

lab@FIREFLY-PERIMETER-1# run show chassis routing-engine
Routing Engine status:
    Total memory              2048 MB Max   655 MB used ( 32 percent)
      Control plane memory    1150 MB Max   460 MB used ( 40 percent)
      Data plane memory        898 MB Max   189 MB used ( 21 percent)
    CPU utilization:
      User                       0 percent
      Background                 0 percent
      Kernel                     1 percent
      Interrupt                  0 percent
      Idle                      99 percent
    Model                          FIREFLY-PERIMETER RE
    Start time                     2014-03-05 18:49:02 UTC
    Uptime                         15 hours, 11 minutes, 42 seconds
    Last reboot reason             Router rebooted after a normal shutdown.
    Load averages:                 1 minute   5 minute  15 minute
                                       0.00       0.00       0.00

So I tried to enable additional BGP features - BFD(Bidirectional Forwarding Detection) over 120 BGP sessions to test the CPU loading impact:

[edit]
lab@FIREFLY-PERIMETER-1# run show bfd session
                                                  Detect   Transmit
Address                  State     Interface      Time     Interval  Multiplier
1.1.1.2                  Up        ge-0/0/0.1     3.000     1.000        3  
2.2.2.2                  Up        ge-0/0/0.2     3.000     1.000        3  
3.3.3.2                  Up        ge-0/0/0.3     3.000     1.000        3  
...
119.119.119.2            Up        ge-0/0/0.119   3.000     1.000        3  
120.120.120.2            Up        ge-0/0/0.120   3.000     1.000        3  

120 sessions, 120 clients
Cumulative transmit rate 120.0 pps, cumulative receive rate 120.0 pps

Then the result surprise me...the CPU loading(0%) became less than before ???
Cool!

[edit]
lab@FIREFLY-PERIMETER-1# run show chassis routing-engine   
Routing Engine status:
    Total memory              2048 MB Max   655 MB used ( 32 percent)
      Control plane memory    1150 MB Max   460 MB used ( 40 percent)
      Data plane memory        898 MB Max   198 MB used ( 22 percent)
    CPU utilization:
      User                       0 percent
      Background                 0 percent
      Kernel                     0 percent
      Interrupt                  0 percent
      Idle                     100 percent
    Model                          FIREFLY-PERIMETER RE
    Start time                     2014-03-05 18:49:02 UTC
    Uptime                         15 hours, 31 minutes, 33 seconds
    Last reboot reason             Router rebooted after a normal shutdown.
    Load averages:                 1 minute   5 minute  15 minute
                                       0.00       0.00       0.00

Compared with previously Firefly version, I found the difference is that I cannot see the expiry license anymore when I show system license:
[edit]
lab@FIREFLY-PERIMETER-1# run show system license
License usage: none

Licenses installed: none

Maybe its the Juniper's gift without expiry date ?
Try it and you will know!


POC Lab configurations:

• FIREFLY-PERIMETER-1
• FIREFLY-PERIMETER-2

Juniper RTBH Reference:

• BGP remote-triggered blackhole (RTBH) filter for Juniper 
• Remote Triggered Black Hole Filtering (RTBH) 
• Remote Triggered Black Hole Filtering and Flowspec 

Another related POC:

• [POC] Use Juniper SRX100H to support RTBH BGP scale with 120 BGP Peers