[nsp] Packets per second?

[Steve Francis]

cisco-nsp@thedogsbollocks.co.uk wrote:
> Hi all,
>  I was just comparing various cisco 7xxx routers and associated processors/vips
> so went thro the data sheets noting down architecture and the reported packets
> per second and backplane info.
> 
> I'm just wondering what they benchmarked this on! For example I have a 7206/225
> with 18000pps averaging 40% CPU and spiking each minute (BGP scanner
> etc). According to the docs the NPE225 can do 225000pps... hmm, I'm doubting
> this!


Well, the 7200 performance figures are accurate if the router is 
configured to do nothing else. No routing processes, no ACL's, no 
subinterface tagging.

Otherwise, in the real world, you get CPU load like yours. (But note 
that CPU does not scale linearly - double packets per second and you 
don't double CPU)

But with the NSE engines, the acl impacts are removed.

It mainly depends on what features are supported by what 
hardware/software switching paths.  Unless you want to use no features 
(and vlan tagging is a feature), or all the features you want are 
supported in hardware/distributed CPUs on your platform, cisco's numbers 
will be "somewhat" higher than yours.