[cisco-bba] LNS with 7200 with NPE-G1

[Richard Licon (rlicon)]

Hi Kristofer,

Please see inline @ #RL ...

-----Original Message-----
From: Kristofer Sigurdsson [mailto:kristo at ipf.is] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 2:10 AM
To: Richard Licon (rlicon)
Cc: Dennis Peng (dpeng); Christian Schmit; cisco-bba at puck.nether.net
Subject: RE: [cisco-bba] LNS with 7200 with NPE-G1

Hi,

On Tue, 2005-10-18 at 14:43 -0700, Richard Licon (rlicon) wrote:
> As Dennis mentions, MPF might be a good fit here for this config, 
> especially since the interfaces appear to be only ethernet.
> More can be found here:
> http://cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/sw/iosswrel/ps5413/products_fe
> at
> ure_guide09186a00804c2d31.html

A pretty informational document.  However, a few questions:

1. A ROMmon upgrade.  How big a deal?  Can one download the image somewhere on CCO?  I seem to be unable to find it.

#RL - A big deal if not done properly, but it's pretty straight forward procedure. One needs to purchase the MPF license.

2. Price of the software.  Last time I checked it was around USD $10,000?
#RL - Yes.

3. Stability.  Quoting the document, "The MPF image should not be used as a general purpose router image.".  What does this mean?  Is it not reliable enough?

#RL - MPF should be used for "specific" configurations or applications. If a customer sees a fit for the accelerated features, then MPF makes sense. Customers can take advantage of the MPF software for high speed internet access with MPF providing the accelerated performance via CPU1 i.e, L2TP traffic with ACLs/uRPF/Policing configured and add value-added services to be switched by CPU0; i.e, per-user Firewall with CBAC. 
"General purpose router image" meaning MPF software is not a swiss army knife type image. 

4. Restrictions.  According to the document, MPF does not support MPLS.  Does this mean if I'm using MPLS, I will get no acceleration, or just "less acceleration" (will other features still be accelerated?).

#RL - Today, MPLS is not supported in the MPF images (-is- and -i12o3s), however VRF-lite is accelerated.

What I'm looking for is really an acceleration on the data plane for customer's traffic.

Is Cisco recommending the use of MPF in a live service provider network right now?

#RL - We have customers using MPF in their production network. 

Thanks,
Richard

Thanks,
Kristofer

-- 
Kristófer Sigurðsson           Tel: +354 414 1600
Netrekstur/Network Operations  IP Fjarskipti ehf.