5 ms·

Packet’s offering are so good and so much above competition that it’s not even funny. I mean, why almost no one else is offering BGP ECMP, byoip, anycast routi

by Eikon 7y ago

Packet’s offering are so good and so much above competition that it’s not even funny. I mean, why almost no one else is offering BGP ECMP, byoip, anycast routing, a sane setup system among others. It boggles my mind. It’s a hard sell going back to geoip and shitty layer2 switching that you get everywhere else after using their services.

cimnine 7y ago
Vultr has byoip via BGP: https://www.vultr.com/features/bgp/ https://www.vultr.com/features/bgp/ You can also implement anycast with it. Feel free to use my affiliate link worth 50$ to you: https://www.vultr.com/?ref=7965104-4F https://www.vultr.com/?ref=7965104-4F
- q3k 7y ago
  Vultr's BGP is not very good though. I regularly lose the full Internet BGP table from them and have to ask support to fix it. Supposedly it's some sort of limit of their network infrastructure. Another day they just randomly stopped announcing my prefix to the Internet, and since they don't even have a looking glass it was impossible to debug without, again, asking their support.
swyx 7y ago
hi I'm a mere frontend developer who doesnt do much at the network layer - do you mind ELIFEDing to me what exactly Packet got right? What's the big deal about automated bare metal? is it somehow a lot faster? cheaper? than virtualization? Is Packet 100% for edge computing or is Equinix kinda repurposing it in this acquisition for its edge computing strategy? I feel like something that is so obvious to you is not obvious to me and it'd probably help other readers here to follow along. Thanks in advance
- shaklee3 7y ago
  Here's the way I see it: there are a lot of customers who don't need all of the AWS services. They also would prefer to be running on bare metal for performance reasons, and to have slightly more control over their application. I know AWS with the nitro instances are closing that gap, but packet was around before they had those. Also, their provisioning software is excellent. From the time you choose to deploy, it takes only about 30 to 45 seconds for your instance to start. I know AWS is faster, but AWS isn't installing a new operating system each time. as the other posters pointed out, they have a lot of features that AWS will also not let you do, like bgp with ecmp. lastly, they tend to have newer types of instances that other providers don't that you can play around on. The cavium arm processor comes to mind, which I haven't seen on any of the major cloud providers.
  - swyx 7y ago
    ok awesome. minor follow up - why do customers care about the newer instances like cavium arm processors? again is it a pure performance thing? or they are extremely optimized for some kind of workload? maybe i'm so used to OSes abstracting things that I completely lack knowledge about what baremetal choices can do for me. this is a little scary.
    - shaklee3 7y ago
      I can't speak for everyone, but ARM processors may be cheaper for some types of workloads. In terms of cores/$, they're cheaper, but some applications would perform far worse on those than on x86. Others just want to use them as a playground to test ideas without buying an ARM server.
- Eikon 7y ago
  Well, bare metal is usually way cheaper for way more performance at the cost of often being less managed. What packet got right is that you get the same functionality that you could usually only get in colocation environments using high-end networking equipment. You may want to look up on the Internet for “BGP” and “Autonomous System” to learn more.
  - swyx 7y ago
    ha funny enough i have done a networks 101 course so am familiar with BGP and ASes. just feel like thats a big leap to Packet which is much more cutting edge. thanks for the confirmation!
justinholmes 7y ago
Google Cloud allows bring your own anycast ranges mapped to global load balancers.

by Eikon 7y ago

cimnine 7y ago

Vultr has byoip via BGP: https://www.vultr.com/features/bgp/ https://www.vultr.com/features/bgp/ You can also implement anycast with it. Feel free to use my affiliate link worth 50$ to you: https://www.vultr.com/?ref=7965104-4F https://www.vultr.com/?ref=7965104-4F

q3k 7y ago
Vultr's BGP is not very good though. I regularly lose the full Internet BGP table from them and have to ask support to fix it. Supposedly it's some sort of limit of their network infrastructure. Another day they just randomly stopped announcing my prefix to the Internet, and since they don't even have a looking glass it was impossible to debug without, again, asking their support.

swyx 7y ago

hi I'm a mere frontend developer who doesnt do much at the network layer - do you mind ELIFEDing to me what exactly Packet got right? What's the big deal about automated bare metal? is it somehow a lot faster? cheaper? than virtualization? Is Packet 100% for edge computing or is Equinix kinda repurposing it in this acquisition for its edge computing strategy? I feel like something that is so obvious to you is not obvious to me and it'd probably help other readers here to follow along. Thanks in advance

shaklee3 7y ago
Here's the way I see it: there are a lot of customers who don't need all of the AWS services. They also would prefer to be running on bare metal for performance reasons, and to have slightly more control over their application. I know AWS with the nitro instances are closing that gap, but packet was around before they had those. Also, their provisioning software is excellent. From the time you choose to deploy, it takes only about 30 to 45 seconds for your instance to start. I know AWS is faster, but AWS isn't installing a new operating system each time. as the other posters pointed out, they have a lot of features that AWS will also not let you do, like bgp with ecmp. lastly, they tend to have newer types of instances that other providers don't that you can play around on. The cavium arm processor comes to mind, which I haven't seen on any of the major cloud providers.
- swyx 7y ago
  ok awesome. minor follow up - why do customers care about the newer instances like cavium arm processors? again is it a pure performance thing? or they are extremely optimized for some kind of workload? maybe i'm so used to OSes abstracting things that I completely lack knowledge about what baremetal choices can do for me. this is a little scary.
  - shaklee3 7y ago
    I can't speak for everyone, but ARM processors may be cheaper for some types of workloads. In terms of cores/$, they're cheaper, but some applications would perform far worse on those than on x86. Others just want to use them as a playground to test ideas without buying an ARM server.
Eikon 7y ago
Well, bare metal is usually way cheaper for way more performance at the cost of often being less managed. What packet got right is that you get the same functionality that you could usually only get in colocation environments using high-end networking equipment. You may want to look up on the Internet for “BGP” and “Autonomous System” to learn more.
- swyx 7y ago
  ha funny enough i have done a networks 101 course so am familiar with BGP and ASes. just feel like thats a big leap to Packet which is much more cutting edge. thanks for the confirmation!

justinholmes 7y ago

Google Cloud allows bring your own anycast ranges mapped to global load balancers.