[c-nsp] 7200s and CEF (Was: No 12.4T for 7500s)

[Pete Templin]

Alex Rubenstein wrote:
> 
> Well, we use 7500's doe this purpose today (as well as 7200's with 
> NPE-400's). Remember, the latency on the 7200's during BGP scanner is a 
> 'to it' problem, not a 'through it' problem.

(Circling back to this topic)  Doesn't the NPE handle the switching 
decision on every packet (NSE w/ PXF excluded)?  CEF may be optimized 
for high switching rates amidst large routing tables, but isn't the 
lookup still done on the general-purpose CPU, and therefore still 
susceptible to sharing the CPU with other tasks?

pt