[c-nsp] 7505, OC3s and BGP

[Bill Wichers]

> The OC3 to the upstream is bumping up against the ceiling and I am
> seeing some cells get dropped, hence the second upstream.  And
> yikes!  That VIP is sitting at 70% processor utilization right now.
> The OC3 to the customers and other locations is doing alright
> overall, and the processor on it is around 40-45%.  There is no BGP
> at all at the present time, so I don't have to worry about flaps
> yet (haven't missed that) and the RSP4 barely breaks 3% processor
> utilization.

With BGP, and all dCEF on the router, the RSP is probably going to be at
around 8-10% CPU utilization. The RSP8 can hold a lot more memory though,
so if you want to take a lot of BGP feeds that's probably the biggest
concern you'll have with the RSP. I've never seen an RSP crash that I
think ECC would have prevented, so I don't think "it has ECC memory" is
reason enough to want to upgrade. I can fit two full BGP views in an RSP4,
but I'm not sure if 3 full views would fit in the 256MB max config, so BGP
memory needs would me the most likely reason to need to upgrade to an
RSP8.

> So, I was thinking skipping the RSP upgrade and just upgrade the
> VIPs.  Is there that much of an improvement going to a VIP4-80
> instead of a VIP4-50?

A VIP4-50 is just a VIP2-50 that can take twice the RAM -- they both have
the same CPU (there is also increased PA bandwidth available on the VIP4*,
but I doubt you'd any difference from it) The VIP4-80 and VIP6-80 have a
faster CPU and increased switching performance as a result. If CPU load on
your VIP2-50 is a problem, you'd need to upgrade to at least a VIP4-80 to
see any improvement.

     -Bill

*****************************
Waveform Technology
Systems Engineer