SRX

Currently working on putting a SRX 220H in place which will be connected to two Dell PowerConnect 6248 switch stacks. The Dell switches currently operate at Layer 3 and contain all the VLAN info (1,2) and IP routing functions. They both have a default gateway of the current Juniper Netscreen NS-25. The current Netscreen does not have any VLAN entries.

My question is this, would I be better off moving the Layer 3 functions to the SRX and just converting the Dell PowerConnect 6248 switches to Layer 2. Therefore enabling VLAN tagging on the SRX and creating a trunk port between the SRX and the main switch stack. The connecting switch stack would have a trunk port as well between the two switches.

I am able to ping and pass traffic between the SRX and the Dells, but I am seeing packet loss on the return traffic. Almost like the Dell PowerConnects are doing all the routing instead of the Netscreen. Would you recommend having the SRX do all the VLAN routing instead over the Dell?

Probably routing in the switches gives a higher throughput. Routing in the SRX gives you control. If the throughput isn't an issue then go for the control!

I would generally agree about routing on the switches being higher performance, but the Dell powerconnect switches routing performance is absolutely horrible.  I have seen first-hand that routing on a SRX240 is about 10x faster performance than doing so on a powerconnect 6248 switch.

Thanks Ron, I didn't know about this poor routing performance. I'm used to EX switches (:-. It seems to me that this makes the choise even easier, performance and control!

Thanks for the advice! So it sounds like we have a concensus and that the SRX should handle all the routing. On top of everything else, I have a real resource intensive application so any performance I can gain will be a plus.

Do you see any issue with keeping the default VLAN as 1 or should that be changed as well due to the Dells using it as their native VLAN. Was thinking I could just trunk both the VLAN 1 and 124 between the switch stacks and to the corresponding Blade switches. Already have the tagging configured for VLAN 1,124 on the SRX for LAN interface and just need to make the other changes accordingly during my next maintenance window.