Merula Revolutionizes ISP Edge Routing with VyOS

“Merula's partnership with VyOS has yielded significant benefits. By adopting VyOS as their go-to NOS for all routers across their network, Merula achieved outstanding performance, substantial cost savings, and a standardized image and configuration throughout their infrastructure. With the ability to handle future prospects such as 100G interfaces, VyOS has emerged as an integral part of Merula's network architecture. As Merula continues to explore VyOS for additional use cases, such as CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) and LNS (PPoE & IpoE), they are consistently impressed by the pace at which VyOS is evolving and the unwavering support they receive. VyOS has become a true game-changer for Merula Limited, empowering them to provide exceptional ISP services while maximizing efficiency and minimizing costs.”
— Merula Limited Team

Customer Overview

Merula Limited is a prominent ISP providing reliable voice, data, and hosting services for businesses. Previously relying on Quagga and Cisco solutions, they migrated to Juniper but encountered limitations with the MX104 routers. Seeking faster failover capabilities and a cost-effective alternative, Merula embarked on a quest to find a robust network operating system (NOS) for their transit routers.

Challenge

To overcome the limitations of the MX104 routers, Merula evaluated various alternatives. Their objective was to find a solution that not only delivered superior performance but also offered substantial cost savings.

Performance Bottlenecks: The previous MX104 routers experienced BGP convergence durations of roughly 10 minutes, which was too slow for their needs.
Capacity Limits: The previous solution could not support as many full BGP tables as the team needed.
High Costs: Mainstream solutions like the Juniper MX204 came with exorbitant price tags exceeding $500,000.

Why VyOS

The primary factors that led Merula to choose VyOS were its exceptional performance, cost-effectiveness, and ease of use. Merula recognized its operational compatibility with Juniper and its reputation for ease of use. Key drivers included:

Cost Efficiency: A VyOS-based edge routing infrastructure solution cost a mere $45,000, compared to over $500,000 for a comparable Juniper solution.
Ease of Transition: VyOS boasted a command-line interface (CLI) similar to Juniper, minimizing the learning curve for their staff.
Hardware Specifications: Merula deployed an 8x10G server equipped with 128GB RAM, SSD storage, and two Intel Gold processors to maximize VyOS capabilities.

Implementation

Merula harnessed the power of VyOS to address their specific use case of transit routers, employing VyOS with EVPN (Ethernet Virtual Private Network) technology.

Architecture: Each site now features one or two "transit routers" capable of handling eight full routing tables.
Failover Performance: The robust failover capabilities of VyOS allowed any site to route or failover to another site within a remarkable response time of approximately 4 seconds.
Support: The availability of a dedicated Slack channel facilitated prompt assistance, with driver issues resolved within a remarkable 48-hour timeframe.

Results

Merula's partnership with VyOS has yielded significant benefits, empowering them to provide exceptional ISP services while maximizing efficiency. Key outcomes included:

Speed: Reduced BGP convergence and failover time from ~10 minutes to ~4 seconds.
Standardization: Achieved a standardized image and configuration throughout their infrastructure.
Scalability: With the ability to handle future prospects such as 100G interfaces, VyOS has emerged as an integral part of Merula's network architecture.

Looking Ahead

As Merula continues to explore VyOS for additional use cases, such as CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) and LNS (PPPoE & IPoE), they are consistently impressed by the pace at which VyOS is evolving.