[c-nsp] Layer 3 Switch Requirement and Advice

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007, Richard J. Sears wrote:

> I am looking for a good Cisco L3 switch that can handle 3 iBGP sessions
> and OSPF (two of the iBGP sessions to 7206VXR routers doing eBGP with a
> backbone and pulling full tables). Not sure which of the lower end L3
> switches would be able to carry enough ram for the tables and was
> looking for anyone actually running something like this:

There is no lower end L3 switch in Cisco lineup that can actually forward 
packets using a full Internet BGP table. The current only lower end one is 
the Cisco 6500 Sup32 and that will run out of table space as the internet 
table grows beyond its 239k route FIB capability, which will happen 
probably around 2008Q1-2.

If you want to be sure you can use it for a while you need the 
Sup720-3BXL, and that can not really be called "lower end L3 switch" in my 
book.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se