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iRouter, from iTeam - another novel use for the Mac Mini

ColdFusion

By ColdFusion,
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ColdFusion
ColdFusion
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We think this could be a world's first: Forget Cisco or Juniper, yesterday Fubra (the new owners of InsanelyMac) hooked up two Mac Mini boxes running Quagga in to the London INternet eXchange (LINX) to act as BGP border routers for the Fubra Network.

 

For those of you who don't know, an Internet Exchange is where a bunch of ISPs and content providers get together to swap traffic. LINX handles 95% of total UK Internet traffic, and as their newest members Fubra had to come up with a clever solution to keep costs low and speeds high. Utilitising just 3U of rackspace, they were able to install 2 low latency HP gigabit switches and a pair of 1.83 GHz Mac Minis with 2 GB Ram, giving them fully redundant connections to the largest Internet Exchange Point in the world.Fulfilling their environmental obligations, the total power draw of this setup is less than 2 typical household lightbulbs (

 

iRouter.jpg

Setup

  • 2 x HP Procurve 1800 24G Switches
  • 2 x 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo Mac Minis (with 2Gb Memory upgrade)
  • Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn (Server Edition) + OpenSSH + Quagga
  • 2 x 100Mbps connections to LINX (eXtreme LAN and Foundry LAN)

Fubra Director, Paul Maunders, commented "Installing Feisty Fawn on the Mac Minis was a breeze, although we did have problems with the boot-loader with previous versions of Ubuntu. We think Fubra may well be the first to use Mac Minis in a setup like this, but let us know if you've seen it elsewhere."

 

You can read the full article, and see more pictures over on the Fubra Blog.

 

<script type="text/javascript">digg_url = 'http://www.fubra.com/blog/2007/04/first-mac-mini-bgp-routers-on-worlds.html';<script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript">

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PaulMUK
PaulMUK
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The impressive part is the versatility of these little machines, and how they can be up there competing with Cisco and Juniper kit as an ISP's Layer 3 BGP router.

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Simania_NL
Simania_NL
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Forget Cisco or Juniper, yesterday Fubra (the new owners of InsanelyMac) hooked up two Mac Mini boxes in to the London INternet eXchange (LINX)...

 

...giving them fully redundant connections to the largest Internet Exchange Point in the world.

Sorry LINX is not the largest internet exchange, it's AMS-IX, the Amsterdam Internet Exchange, situated in The Netherlands. Please check your sources before making suchs claims :whistle:

 

1 AMS-IX

2 LINX

3 DE-CIX

4 JPNAP

5 Netnod

List of Internet Exchange Points, by size

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SurferSD
SurferSD
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I'm quite confused. Why should we be interested in that?

IMHO it is not so much impressive. The fifth supercomputer in the world based on hundreds of Apple G5 workstations, that was impressive.

This is not the first post I have read where there is some type of hostility in response to a posting by one of the new SysAdmins. I understand it is not the same type of news that we are used to here, but some change in writing styles and subjects is to be expected.

 

This site originated because of the desire to run OSX on x86 architecture. This has now been done and people are continuing the revolution and finder alternate methods of application for Apple hardware/software.

 

Not trying to start a flame war... I have been watching this go on for some time. Mash has been a great leader and I am sure will continue to be... what's that golden rule? If you don't have anything nice to say...

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Synaesthesia
Synaesthesia
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That's great, showcasing the versatility of the mini and all, but I also wonder, what's the point? I mean you pay for things like a superdrive, mac os x and ilife, a friggin remote control, and you don't use any of them. You run linux on it...Yeah, cool but aren't these sort of jobs done with a blade server or something?

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cringemaster
cringemaster
Posted
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This is not the first post I have read where there is some type of hostility in response to a posting by one of the new SysAdmins. I understand it is not the same type of news that we are used to here, but some change in writing styles and subjects is to be expected.

 

This site originated because of the desire to run OSX on x86 architecture. This has now been done and people are continuing the revolution and finder alternate methods of application for Apple hardware/software.

 

Not trying to start a flame war... I have been watching this go on for some time. Mash has been a great leader and I am sure will continue to be... what's that golden rule? If you don't have anything nice to say...

 

Yeah i know what you mean. The admins are doing a good job, and i havent had any problems with the site at all since they took over, except that i am missing my "links for the weekend" a little... ;)

 

Otherwise, the mini looks nice and can work its arse off as well without breaking a sweat. The only thing i wouldve done differently was pulled them out of their aluminum casings, removed the superdrives, and plopped them in a well cooled, modified xserve case or some sort of mill-cut plexi casing that wouldve been able to still keep them looking and running cool. Nice job.

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PaulMUK
PaulMUK
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That's great, showcasing the versatility of the mini and all, but I also wonder, what's the point? I mean you pay for things like a superdrive, mac os x and ilife, a friggin remote control, and you don't use any of them. You run linux on it...Yeah, cool but aren't these sort of jobs done with a blade server or something?

 

As mentioned in the post, originally we considered using some traditional Juniper or Cisco routers, but these things cost about £7000 each, plus they consume more like 400W.

 

We then looked at Extreme Network's Summit x450 series routers, which were cheaper and used less power but in the end they were not suitable as border routers due to their low memory (so they couldn't handle multiple copies of a full route table).

 

It then occured to me that a Mac Mini combined with a decent switch could probably do the job, and we were able to get two of each for less than the price of a single Summit x450!

 

So the main reasons we chose them were the tiny footprint, high performance and low power requirements when compared with a normal 1U server.

 

There aren't many other solutions that allow you to fit two core BGP routers plus 2 x 24 port switches into just 3U of rackspace and 120 Watts of power!

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  • 2 weeks later...
mike503
mike503
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that is neat. i would love to know more about the setup. i wonder if they'd publish their configs and such?

 

i assume they have to use the same NIC for two network interfaces, unless i'm mistaken. i've not setup BGP, but was wondering how/if i could use a mini for LVS, which requires an inbound and outbound interface (whether or not it is virtual is up for debate)

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