[nsp] capacity of 7613

[Lincoln Dale]

At 12:05 PM 8/07/2004, Anouk Rocher wrote:
>I am having some trouble deciphering cisco's slot allocation for
>the 7613. I am hoping somebody here can help me out -
>
>What is the maximum switching capacity one can get with a single
>WS-SUP720-3BXL engine, in a 7613? Can the remaining 12 slots be
>filled up with GE ports and will they go at line rate with a
>single WS-SUP720-3BXL?

the answer to this is dependent on what linecards you're using.

as a platform, the 6513/Sup720 has demonstrated 
highest-performance/highest-density GE in a single chassis using WS-X6724 & 
WS-X6748 linecards.
this has been validated by a 3rd party (EANTC) using a 6513/Sup720 
populated with 410 GE ports, demonstrating 407Mpps (IPv4) & 230Mpps (IPv6).
see 
<http://www.cisco.com/application/pdf/en/us/guest/products/ps708/c1697/cdccont_0900aecd800c511a.pdf> 
for the cisco description.

the complete test report is at 
<http://www.eantc.com/press/pressreleases/sep03/EANTC-Summary-Report-Cisco-GigE-Catalyst6500-Supervisor720.pdf>.
(and a 10GE testbed using a 6509 is at 
http://www.eantc.com/press/pressreleases/sep03/EANTC-Summary-Report-Cisco-10GE-Catalyst6500-Supervisor720.pdf)
these are worth a look just to see what a spaghetti of 410 x GE ports and 
the fact that it need 2.5 racks worth of Smartbits into a single chassis. :-)
tested was more than just basic layer-3 switching; IPv4, IPv6, 10,000 line 
access-lists, latency, multicast, ...

in terms of details to answer your question, with a Sup720, you have 
20gbit/s of crossbar capacity per "channel".  a single "crossbar" the 
Sup720 has 18 "channels".
18 channels works nicely on a 9-slot chassis (each slot gets 2 channels); 
the same unfortunately doesn't hold true for a 13-slot, so what you end up 
with is slots 1-8 have a single channel/crossbar (20gbit/s) & slots 9-13 
have 2 channels/crossbar (40gbit/s).

the actual "performance" you'll get will depend a lot of what linecards are 
installed, whether they have distributed-switching capability or not, 
whether they're crossbar-enabled linecards, and whether they're 
20gbit/s-crossbar-enabled (the older Sup2/SFM/SFM2 was 8gbit/s per channel).

assuming you were using "current generation" cards (Sup720 provides 
complete backwards compatibility to use older cards so you don't /need/ 
to), and wanted MAXIMUM possible performance, you would use linecards that 
have aCEF720 or dCEF720.

if you wanted maximum optical GE density & performance, you would use 
WS-X6748-SFP and/or WS-X6724-SFP for 48x/24x optical (SFP) ports.
if you wanted maximum copper GE (10/100/1000) density & performance, you 
would use WS-X6748-GE-TX for 48 x RJ45 ports.


cheers,

lincoln.