[c-nsp] Cisco 7304 as a Border router

[Mark Prior]

On 14 January 2005, Robert Blayzor wrote:

> I'm looking for anyones comments or experiences with using 7300's in a 
> border router deployment and if it's meeting your needs.  I'm curious as 
> to what type and how much traffic you are pushing through it.

We have a 7304-G100 acting as a border router, multiple OC12 transits, 
but it doesn't really like a large number of flows in that role so DOS 
is esepcially annoying. It's fine as an edge system though. The native 
ATM card has MTU problems so I would avoid it. We also had issues with 
the system turning off both ports on the dual OC12 card when it had a 
problem with one of the ports which we considered pretty anti-social. 
We've also had a couple of unexplainable reloads.

IOS choices are pretty limited and the way Cisco is handling 12.2S is 
confusing. At least it does jumbo frames on the GbE ports which is 
better than a 7206VXR/G1.

Of our cisco border routers the 12404/PRP-2 seems the best, hardly 
surprising really.

Mark.