[nsp] PXF / NSE-1 experiences?

[Gregor von Stangen]

Hello,

> > from our personal experience, I would avoid the NSE-1. Last 
> year, we had
> > three NSE-1 in use which kept happily crashing. The boards have been
> > swapped to NPE-400 in the meantime and run stable now.
> 
> Do you know if this is a result of systemically flaky 
> hardware (problems w/
> 2948G-L3's cited on list come to mind), or just unstable 
> code? (ie. 7401 is
> always an option if Cisco doesn't consider PXF isn't a good 
> idea gone bad)

this was just unstable Code. Every 2 weeks or so, the box ran out
of memory and crashed. It not just only rebooted but you to reactivate
the machine from the console, sometimes we had to power-cycle the
whole router.

> Were you using PXF-assisted features before switching? If so, 
> how much of a 
> cpu hit did you take going to the NPE-400?

we bought the NSE-1's becaused we needed hardware which was able
to do wire-speed OC3/STM-1. We didn't use any special features,
just IP-routing with BGP4 and OSPF. After switching to the NPE-400,
the CPU load didn't increase dramitically, just 4-5% over the
NSE-1, which was tolerable for us.

Meanwhile, I guess, you might check out the NPE-G1. I have no personal
experience with this CPU but from what I take from the data sheet, it
is believed to be more powerful than the NSE-1. Maybe some other list
members can help you with their experiences.

> > Just curious if you're obligated/committed to use Cisco, 
> because you 
> > already have the equipment on hand, or if your open to 
> other vendors?  
> 
> Don't have the equipment available presently, but the 
> flexibility of the
> platform is a big plus for me (ie. will always be re-deployable to do
> something useful -- route reflector, ipsec box, intervlan 
> router, etc, etc).  
> 
> Recognizing that what I want is a bit atypical (src addr 
> selection based on
> port) and I can write the IOS config for it off the top of my 
> head (and know
> it works) makes me a bit reluctant to go after a different 
> product (though I
> will check it out, thanks).
> 
> Thanks for the feedback..

Best regards,

  Gregor

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