[c-nsp] 7304 impressions

[Kevin Graham]

On Apr 6, 2005 7:31 AM, Paul Lustgraaf <grpjl at iastate.edu> wrote:
>
> I have four 7304-NSE100s that I use for campus border routers.  Early
> software didn't support the PXF very well, but now I'm at 12.2.20S6
> and life is relatively good.  As long as you avoid features not
> supported by PXF, like source routing, the PXF works really real.

Same here. After working through a series of bugs, I've got a 7304
chewing through PXF'ed NAT beautifully. The only problem is the 32k
PXF NAT limitation, which I bump close to pretty regularlly. Have not
gone to 25S yet, but the NAT Ager enhancements should help this out
some.

If you're just looking at generic IPv4 forwarding, I wouldn't have any
reservations w/ PXF at all now and the boost in forwarding capacity is
huge. I do hope a refresh of the NSE-100 is released soon though, as
the RP CPU and 512mb memory cap is showing its age. I'm just starting
to push some into this role (simple ACL's, multiple BGP feeds, etc)
and only wish this platform was promoted more by Cisco, as it very
nicely fills the huge gap between the NPE-G1 and 6500/GSR.

With either of the RP options, the one thing to keep in mind (if it
matters for you) is that there your release choices are very limited
and they're usually to be significantly lagged from the 7200's.

For DS3 and OC3 termination, be sure to check out the new SPA's -- the
additional density (and SFP's) along w/ smaller incremental growth is
great.