[nsp] NPE-G1 experience

[Streiner, Justin]

We're thinking about upgrading one of our Cisco 7206VXRs, currently
running an NPE-300, to an NPE-G1.  The CPU on the 300 is getting beaten up
on a pretty regular basis, to the point where some network performance is
starting to suffer.

The router in question is running straight IP feature set, lots of OSPF
and multiple IBGP and EBGP neighbors, TACACS authentication, etc.  It's
not doing anything much more exotic than that at the moment, e.g. VPN
tunnels, policy routing, MPLS, etc...

Aggregate traffic across the box at the moment is around 180 Mb/s on a
decent mix of interfaces, everything from T1s to a long-haul gig-e shot.

Has anyone here had much experience with the G1 to say if this would
likely be a worthwhile upgrade?  The main things I'm looking to gain out
of this are the CPU headroom and getter gig-e performance.  For a variety
of reasons, forklifting in a bigger router platform isn't practical at the
moment - I'm just trying to get the best bang for the buck on limited
resources.

Any advice or experience is greatly appreciated.

jms