[c-nsp] How do ACLs effect throughput

[Terence Scott]

Dear all,

My organisation has two (old) Cisco 2600 series routers deployed in two 
remote sites, one 2620 and one 2621. So far these routers have been 
performing very well, however we are now looking at substantially 
increasing the bandwidth of the WAN links that connect these two remote 
sites to the central office. At present these remote sites connect to 
the central office via 4Mbps ADSL lines and we will be upgrading these 
to 100Mbps (full-duplex) optical fibre links. We are essentially trying 
to determine whether these old routers will still be able to handle the 
increased traffic load or whether we need to upgrade the routers as 
well. The information we have managed to find so far suggests that these 
routers would be able to cope if all packet switching is done in CEF. 
The set-up in these remote sites is quite simple and we only use 
extended IP access lists in order to control access to certain VLANs. 
Does anybody know whether these ACLs would cause the traffic to be 
punted from CEF to process switching?

Many thanks

Terence