[c-nsp] 6500 sup32 v sup720

[Asbjorn Hojmark - Lists]

> Would appreciate your thoughts and comments on this...or indeed
> is the 6500 the best box to go with - I have a good budget and 
> basically need a box capable of receiving full routes/upto
> 2Gbps traffic rates/and plenty of optical GigE and 10/100/1000
> interfaces. 

As others have said, you should go the the Sup720-3BXL because of
the TCAM limits of the Sup32, which can 'only' be tuned to 239k
prefixes.

Other differences:

Sup32 has eight on-board GE ports, slightly better queueing and
scheduling on the uplink ports, two USB ports, and more onboard
flash.

The Sup720 has a 360 Gbps switching fabric (the 32 has only a 16
Gbps shared bus), supports distributed forwarding for a total of
400 Mpps, and has a slightly more powerful router CPU. It is sold
with a base ($0) license for IP Services vs IP Base on the Sup32
(10 k$ diff).

The Sup720 also supports the new high-density, high-performance
modules in the 67xx series, such as 6724 (15 k$ for 24 ports and
20Gbps) or the 6748 (20k$ for 48 ports and 40 Gbps) vs 6516A (15
k$ for 16 ports and 8 Gbps).

The PFC on the Sup720 is also field-upgradable, so one can swap
the PFC3B for a PFC3BXL (or PFC3CXL, when time comes). Whether
the same will be possible for the Sup32 remains to be seen.


In *my* opinion, the Sup32 makes little sense. But they ship lots
of them, so I guess other people see this differently.

-A