[SuperRacks]

Hi,

I've been looking around for some time now, as to where to start as it comes to buying hardware for a small AS.

We are talking 50-100Mbps bandwidth and generally speaking, mostly web-/hostingservers with appr. 60-80% exchange (ams-ix).

We are not generally addicted to a brand, so all brands are possible. There would have to be enough spare to keep the thing going, but used is an option.

I have been looking for some options, and this is what I have been thinking sofar:

Foundry BI4k: nice to start with, and with the jet core sufficient for some 50 Mbps? But, there are supposed to be BGP issues with the BI?

Roverstone e.a: hard to get good stuff, in Europe not to much experience with these switches.

Cisco 720xvxr: a good router, but I'm not to sure about how to get the latest ios without being ripped off

Juniper m5/m7i: probably the best choice, but for now out of budget. How to get software upgrades (service contracts?)

Quagga e.a: not my preference. The kernel tweaking and maintaning would probably take to much time.

The advantage of a switch is, that with upgrading later, you can place a router in front and use the switch as core switch. The network is not really attracting ddos-es, but I would like to have some margin on to get through a ddos. The AS would probably have (at start) a NL-IX or AMS-ix 100Mbps, and two or three carriers. including a backup.

If this all means that the budget is to tight, then we move the step backwards.

Any thoughts on how to come to a conclusion on this? Am I missing an option?

Thanks for your help.

Hans