Re: [nsp] Which software for Catalyst 6500...

From: rkuhljr@uol.com.br
Date: Tue Feb 13 2001 - 14:34:04 EST


> I'd love to hear comments and real life experience with IOS for a
> Catalyst 6500 as opposed to an older CatOS.

Both IOS and CatOS are being maintaned and getting new
major/minor versions...

> Are there any reasons not to use IOS image for a Catalyst in ISP
> environment? Any major caveats?

Yes, the features that CatOS supports that SupIOS doesn't, like
bot not limited to, PVLANs.

In the other hand, Sup IOS supports SLB (load-balancing all done
by the 6500 box, not ASLB, which only CatOS supports and
accelerates Local Director), and is the only version targeted for
DFC support, the distributed L2/L3 operation that will be possible
with Supervisor 2 and properly-equipped line-cards.

> Is CatOS better supported? I see it has rolled over version number 6.1
> while the IOS image is still 12.0(7)XE1.

No; CatOS is now at 6.1.2, with MSFC IOS at 12.1(5a)E and
SupIOS is at 12.1(5a)E3. They are all getting improvements, new
fixes and new features... and although the release notes states
that some new bugs that have been introduced and corrected, so
far I've never hit such a problem. The bug that bother me
now(TCAM overflow after many large ACL updates) has been
present since the first versions, and the MLS flow limit is a
hardware design issue.

Rubens Kuhl Jr.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Aug 04 2002 - 04:12:29 EDT