[c-nsp] Re: Cisco 7600 vs Juniper M7i

[Robert Blayzor]

Raju Raghvan wrote:
> Has anyone done a comparison between Cisco 7600 and juniper M7i router viz its performance while switching some 200MB of internet traffic with PBR ,ACL's  and policing configured .....I am looking at boxes for my internet aggregation , the box will have to do Qos .WOuld be really great if someone could through some light on this based on some real world experience...


We just went down this path this spring.  We were considering the 7600
vs the Juniper M10i.

Juniper has a nice product, but they are over confident and have a lot
of Cisco bashing marketing cool-aid.

We chose the 7606's over the M10i's for several reasons.  I think the
biggest reason is we needed several Gig-E interfaces on each router
(around six each to start).  Juniper's per Gig-E pricing is over the
top... $20,000 list PER PORT.  Yes there are some discounts, but I think
each port was still quoted to us at about $15,0000 each.  It's an insane
price for a single Gig-E port.

Aside from price Juniper will claim that "We're wirespeed on every port
with full ACL's, etc".  The 7600 can also do that if you need it to.
Our Juniper rep ranted on the fact that the 7600 is just a 6500 switch
with a beefed up route processor.  He is correct, but I don't think
that's a bad thing... I see more benefit from it than limitations.

On the 7600 we went with the Sup720-3B's.  That will give you a 30Mil
PPS forwarding engine day one.

If you start exceeding the route processors capabilities you can add
DFC's right to the line card and it scales right into a full distributed
forwarding router.  This will give you full wirespeed ACL's and QoS
without a problem. (so long as you don't exceed the slot bandwidth limit
which I believe is 40Gbps per slot)

While adding DFC's could be pricey, consider your alternatives.  A 24
port Gig-E card for a 7600 costs about $9k + SFP's...  If you populate
the entire thing and add DFC's your cost per port is far less than what
Juniper could ever dream of delivering you.  Not to mention the M10i
does not have the port density and line card selections that the 7600's
can give you.  The other nice thing is that the 7600's can reuse all
your 7200/7500 WAN cards, etc. (if you had any - no stranded investment)

-- 
Robert Blayzor, BOFH
INOC, LLC
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