[nsp] SUMMARY: Native IOS for 6509?

[John Kristoff]

A few days ago I posed the following:

> I'm soliciting opinions and experiences for running Native code on a
> 6509 with a sup720.
> 
> The environment of interest would be running at least a dozen 6509s with
> well populated ports containing 10/100/1000 Ethernet and an eye towards
> 10 gig.  The network would also have multicast (PIM-SM) widely deployed.
> 
> Ideally respondents should have been running Native for some time or
> would have switched back to Hybrid recently due to problems.
> 
> I'd be especially interested in replies from large .edu's and those with
> emails ending in @cisco.com.  :-)
> 
> If people would send replies privately I can summarize back to the list.

I received 6 replies.  Each paragraph below summarizes respondent info.
Thanks very much to each of those 6 folks.  The info was very helpful.

A colleague from a Canadian research-oriented organization reports
running Native for at least 6 months.  They use 10/100/1000 ports with
PIM-SM and are supplying multicast to a MSFC2/SUP2 also running native.
High load apps are passing through the box.  No reported problems or
complaints even with mixed code between the MSFC2/SUP and sup720.

A colleague from a large national/international ISP reports running the
sup720 with native for both L2 and L3 ethernet-based solutions.  They
are running 12.2(17d)SXB currently, but have run 12.2(14SX), 12.2(17SX)
and 12.2(17SXA) in the past.  They maintain full iBGP routes, plus
unicast and multicast NLRI on both IPv4 and IPv6 eBGP.  PIM-SM is also
running.  They report things are working fine.

A colleague from a large Midwestern University reports running 3 7609s
with native with PIM-SM on each.  They have a lot of 100 Mb/s ethernet
with gig interconnections.  they are looking at 10 gig in a year or two.
They are not used for off-campus peering, do not use them as their RP
and do not have IPv6 on them.  IPv6 is being planned for the summer.
They warn of potential Netflow problems, apparently some records or
subset of record info does not exist.  Apparently AS and interface ID
were not there at some point, but it is not confirmed.  They report that
for what they do with these boxes they work well.

A colleague from another Large Midwestern University reports that they
are installing 720s this summer and they are planning to run native for
better routing features.  They currently run hybrid on sup2s.  They
believe for edge aggregation that CatOS may be more appropriate and that
Cisco is positioning CatOS for the edge and distribution market, whereas
IOS will be for core switching and routing.  They are looking for
features like MPLS and IPv6 in the core, which native has and CatOS
probably won't get.  They also indicated that the IOS image for hybrid
generally lags behind the native image.  They believe native and hybrid
are relatively equal, but that CatOS has better syslog support and does
not impact the box like the 'debug' command on IOS has a tendency to do.
They also point out that having the common IOS interface can make
management and the management tools simpler.

A colleague from a state university in New York reports that they have
about 7000 nodes runing off a 6513 and a 6509.  Both have sup720s running
native. They have multicast deployed everywhere.  They report no
complaints and are very happy with them.

A colleague from a large Texas university reports that they have been
running sup720s with native since August 2003.  They have about 12 boxes
with more on the way.  These boxes are on a dual fiber optic star
backbone.  They also have about 40 backbone sites that are mostly sup2
or sup1a boxes running hybrid. There are many 10/100/1000 ports throughout.
The "buggiest thing" they've seen on the Ethernet ports is the 'input queue
drop' counters that constantly increment.  They report that this appears to
be a cosmetic problem only and likely due to trunking encapsulation frames
being incorrectly counted by old 10/100 6248 cards.  They have multiple 10
gig connections between some of the backbone and core as well as 10 gig
available on many boxes.  They have PIM-SM widely deployed in the backbone
and in the campus.  They get multicast from I2 via a 622 Mb/s link.  They
don't report any problems with 'feature skew', but they wish they had the
'show top' CatOS command.  They feel the config of QoS was easier on Hybrid,
but perhaps because they were familiar with it there. It took them a lot of
work to convert their CatOS QoS config to the native IOS config.  They
apparently ran into some Netflow bugs in August 2003, but they have been
fixed.  They report that the sup720s have been stable and performing well
under native.

John