[cisco-bba] 7204VXR vs ASR1001-x (as LNS / provider is LAC)

[Nathan Downes]

From: Bruce Technical [mailto:brucetechnical at gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, 13 February 2017 6:22 AM
To: Nathan Downes <nathandownes at hotmail.com>
Cc: cisco-bba at puck.nether.net
Subject: Re: [cisco-bba] 7204VXR vs ASR1001-x (as LNS / provider is LAC)

Hi Nathan,

"but you can activate evaluation licenses which turn to RTU after 30 days, still honour based but TAC won’t help for issues without them." <<< You mean we have to purchase licenses after 30 days or do you mean features will work without purchase but there won't be any TAC support? I am wondering if Cisco even sells those licenses anymore and if they are not transferable this means an item from ebay won't do the job.

This is for the ASR, not the 7204.

"Half the sessions come in as direct PPPOE and the rest come in over L2TP tunnels. " <<< I am planning for NPE-G2 as everyone is suggesting it but why would half the session come in as direct PPPoE and rest over L2TP? is that how this work or just your infrastructure?

Just the way we do it, 2 providers just send them across a VLAN, one provider across a L2TP tunnel

"We also do NAT for about 60% of the sessions too which increases the CPU usage." <<< Why do you do NAT? Don't your clients get their own public IP address without any NATing involved? Or is this some sort of inbound traffic shaping?

We do a few retirement villages, they don’t need their own public IP, also not easy to get lots of IP’s anymore ☺

"Still think that is fair, 7204vxr limited to 3gbit max using all ports, and ESP40 will do 40gbit + a whole heap of other stuff.  " <<< Given there is only 3 usable ports on NPE-G2 and no other NPE modules available the only option for us is to stack when we grow or move to ASR1001-x when price makes sense. We get a 1gbps fiber coming to us from ISP so that should be just fine but as Harald mentioned 7204vxr+NPE-G2 realistically does up to 500mbps with this setup so we might have to soon stack. Can we not have a network design like this without worrying if our Service Provider supports multiple LNS IPs on our end:

                                                   Service Provider
                                                                |
                                     -----some managed switch -----
                                        |                   |                       |
                               7204vxr-A    7204vxr-B     7204vxr-C

And we ask the switch to somehow load balance things?

Never maxxed it out to find out the limits, so Harald is more than likely right ☺ and as he mentioned we can get provider to send @Realm1 to one LNS IP and @Realm2 to another, that is usually a feature of the LAC as I understand it to decide what LNS the sessions go to, so the “some managed switch” would be a LAC.  I have not got to the point this became an issue and I had to solve it so I can’t suggest anything apart from checking provider can do it.

Regards,


On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 8:10 PM, Nathan Downes <nathandownes at hotmail.com<mailto:nathandownes at hotmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Bruce,

Yes we got Advanced IP Enterprise?? + BB license (500 sessions), can increase later if necessary, I think without them the commands do nothing on a ASR1001-x, but you can activate evaluation licenses which turn to RTU after 30 days, still honour based but TAC won’t help for issues without them.

7204vxr I just got ADV IP Enterprise and it did everything I needed, they didn’t do they charge for each feature option for them (or I just didn’t know about it), just make sure you get a NPE-G2 and not one of the earlier engines.  Half the sessions come in as direct PPPOE and the rest come in over L2TP tunnels.  We also do NAT for about 60% of the sessions too which increases the CPU usage.

I remember reading about the radius challenges, but I don’t think we used those features, apart from the config for the radius being in a slightly different way it was pretty easy to setup.   I would think with just DSL you could easily do 1k+ sessions on the 7204vxr without stretching it, if you are expecting quick growth above that I would look at the ASR, hard for me to guess though because not that many DSL connections.  Price difference is huge, here 2nd hand ASR1004, ESP40, RP2, SIP40, 10gbit module and 3 x 8 x 1gbit module + licenses and smartnet came out at about 50k.. where we got the 7204vxr about 4-5 years ago for 5k.

Still think that is fair, 7204vxr limited to 3gbit max using all ports, and ESP40 will do 40gbit + a whole heap of other stuff.

From: Bruce Technical [mailto:brucetechnical at gmail.com<mailto:brucetechnical at gmail.com>]
Sent: Sunday, 12 February 2017 10:36 AM
To: Nathan Downes <nathandownes at hotmail.com<mailto:nathandownes at hotmail.com>>
Cc: cisco-bba at puck.nether.net<mailto:cisco-bba at puck.nether.net>
Subject: Re: [cisco-bba] 7204VXR vs ASR1001-x (as LNS / provider is LAC)

Hi Nathan,

Thanks for the feedback.

1- ASR1001-x need IP Advance licenses ($6k) and sessions licens (500 for $5k and 4500 more for another $5k+). Do you need those for your setup?

2- Are there any licenses you have to buy for the 7204vxr series to be able to do LNS/LAC or VRF and L2TP?

Side note: There are some Radius challenges apparently that the new ASR will throw your way.

Cheers,

On Sat, Feb 11, 2017 at 4:41 PM, Nathan Downes <nathandownes at hotmail.com<mailto:nathandownes at hotmail.com>> wrote:
Hi,

We use a 7204vxr with an NPE-G2 as an LNS,  Carrier sends sessions from their LAC to us via L2TP tunnel.

Use it more for FTTx than DSL, have about 30 DSL sessions and 400 FTTX connections, varying fom 12/1 to 100/40.  Pretty impressed with the NPE-G2, we average about 30-40% CPU with those connections, no extra cards in device, just using standard 3 gigabit ports on the NPE, one for inbound sessions, one for internet and one for radius.

In the process of putting in an ASR1004 with an ESP40 in a couple of weeks, a lot more coin than the 7204, but consolidating a bit and we do a lot of L2 Fibre connections to business customers, biggest reason is to get netflow for new data retention laws.

Not being a Cisco expert by any means, moving from a switch platform to a router platform has been a huge learning curve!

From: cisco-bba [mailto:cisco-bba-bounces at puck.nether.net<mailto:cisco-bba-bounces at puck.nether.net>] On Behalf Of Bruce Technical
Sent: Sunday, 12 February 2017 7:03 AM
To: cisco-bba at puck.nether.net<mailto:cisco-bba at puck.nether.net>
Subject: [cisco-bba] 7204VXR vs ASR1001-x (as LNS / provider is LAC)

Hi,

We are entering the DSL reseller market and costs for ASR1001-x or ASR1002-x are in the $20k+ for Cisco ASR1001-x + IP Advance Licenses + 500 Sessions.

We are considering used 7204VXR. What is it in ASR1001-x that 7204VXR can't do for example?

Our Service Provider require LNS/LAC, L2TP, VRF, and Radius.


Thanks,
Bruce


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