[nsp] sizing a router

[Tarko Tikan]

hi!

> It's a good question where Cisco will position it. It's a good little box
> if you go for the NSE-100 with PXF to do all the features quite happily.
>
> It's a bit lacking in the interface department and it's quite a bit bigger
> than the 7200 when it comes to interface density, ie you get 6 T3
> interfaces in a single card, which is good in some cases, but quite
> expensive in others (if you don't need all the ports).

7304 with NSE-100 is really nice box. With pxf, most of the stuff is handled 
in hardware so there is no problems with ACLs or DDoS. Everything is cool 
until you need more than 2 GE ports - there are no additional GE interfaces 
available. So if you need to route between 2 GE and other kind of interfaces, 
I would recommend 7304 from cisco family.

PS! I relooked datasheets and there is now a "Shared Port Adapter Carrier 
Card" available for 7304 which supports GE interfaces so there is possibility 
to add GE interfaces. Dunno if it's working or not but "Port Adapter Carrier 
Card" with 7200 stm-1 interfaces crashed a lot when we tested it.

If you need to route between GE and FE interfaces only, 6500/7600 is way to go 
on cisco platform. OSM or FlexWAN interfaces for 7600 are expensive and I 
don't see a point adding, for example, a stm-4 interfaces to l3 ethernet 
switch.

-- 
tarko