[c-nsp] Old gear question - Sup IIIG w/RSFC vs. RSM w/NFFC

[Robert Boyle]

Hello all,

We have a few old Catalyst 5500s to which we need to add L3 routing since 
100Mbit trunks are now getting saturated and we want to have redundancy 
with VRRP/HSRP. We have both RSMs (w/NFFC2) and Sup IIIGs with RSFCs 
available. I know they are both EOL. The RSFC seems to be much higher 
performance according to the specs, but Cisco stopped at IOS 12.1. The RSMs 
support 12.2, but are slower. I'm just wondering what experiences folks 
have had with these two options and which way I should go for moderate 
bandwidth colo switching/routing - up to a total potential of a couple 
hundred Mbit/s inter-VLAN L3 routing. Some small ACLs will be used on some 
VLANs. The RSMs seem to be limited to about 150Mbit/s (accelerated to wire 
speed with the NFFC2), while the RSFC can do 2Gbit/s? It just seems odd to 
me that Cisco would have two very similar products which do the same thing 
in different ways. Any tips and real world experience as to which is a 
better solution would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

-Robert


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