[c-nsp] 7600 with MWAM (Broadband Aggregation)

[Vusi Ndebele]

List,

 

I'm Interested in anybody that has deployed or considered deploying the 7600
with Multiple MWAM solution for broadband aggregation. In particular, I am
interested in real world experiences of how this box performs under load.
The 7600 is a very capable platform when it comes to its bread and butter
routing/switching function and though the MWAM looks like quite a beast
itself on paper, I want to get an idea of performance metrics other than
what's in the marketing bumf. Something a bit more 'objective' than the
miercom reports too ;-) I know that the 7200, even with NPE G1 didn't quite
live up to the marketing figures in the real world so even though there's 6
processors on the MWAM, I'd be hesitant to 'suck it and see' on a live
network and there's only so much you can do without a full lab environment.

A 7600 can handle up to 4 MWAMs so its an impressive subscriber density per
box but I'm interested in how people evaluated this against the Juniper ERX
and the Redback SE for instance. Cisco comes in cheapest but with a very
centralized processing architecture whereas the competition have distributed
functionality across more intelligent line cards and a more modular software
architecture too.

I'm just floating this to get objective opinions.

 

In the first instance, the MWAM would be functioning as an L2TP LAC until
we're ready to cut out the tunneling and terminate PPP sessions locally on
the box. All subs are PPPoE ( PPPoE auto detection and conversion done on
the DLSAM)

 

Also, any pointers as to load balancing traffic across MWAMs in failure and
non-failure scenarios. i.e. VLANs being trunked to all 4 MWAMs and letting
the subscriber choose between the PADOs. That scenario looks like the
no-brainer solution but there's little you can do to coax traffic towards or
away from any 1 blade, you would have to hope that the more lightly loaded
MWAMs would respond with PADOs before the heavier loaded blades and the CPE
would accept the first offer.

 
What are all you kids buying for your large Ethernet BBA deployments?

 

Thanks