[c-nsp] 6500/7600 with Sup720 opinion

[Chris Roberts]

> On Sun, 23 Jan 2005, Ryan O'Connell wrote:
> 
> > I thought the 7600 MPLS functionality was severely limited - could 
> > only act as a core, not edge device or similar? (I forget 
> the details)
> >
> > (We're deploying 7600s next month, MPLS won't be needed immediately 
> > but we'll need it in around 6 months time - was planning to 
> use 7200s 
> > at the
> > edge)
> 
> AFAIK, it depends on the supervisor.  AFAIK 3B and 3BXL give 
> you full MPLS VPN P/PE functionality (more VRFs/routes per 
> VRF on the 3BXL).  Original Sup720 does not.  Sup2 doesn't either.
> 
> For now, we're keeping 7200/7500 routers for MPLS.

We upgraded our Sup1As to Sup720s in our 6509-NEBS chassis' last week (see
previous woes regarding the appalling 6509-NEBS-UPGRD kits), running MPLS
(L3 VPNs only at the moment), running as PE routers. One of them crashed on
Friday morning, 7 days after we upgraded it. I have yet to do any
diagnostics, but it required a power cycle (nothing on console). We're
running 12.2(18)SXD2, and I'm probably going to go to SXD3 if necessary. 

I believe the 720B supports 256,000 routes total with 512 routes/VRF, and
the 720BXL supports 1m routes total with 1024 routes/VRF. Also, they support
PE functionality on non OSM cards, meaning that you no longer need a trunk
link between your 6509 and your 7500 or 7200, or your OSM cards (we ran both
configurations).

They seem like an impressive platform, but there are quite clearly glitches
at the moment, and I hope they're not going to be long term problems. As for
while the box is running, it seems to be very nice, does all the things we
need and seems to perform very well for them.

Depending on how they go as our PE routers we're evaluating them for our
peering edge later this year.

If anyone has any pointers to further architecture details on the
Sup720s/6509s (I had Cisco IOS Internals which gave me the lowdown on the
72xx/75xx architecture), I'd be interested in pointers.

Cheers,
Chris.


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