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

[Simon Leinen]

Church, Chuck writes:
> Is this really a fair fight though?  You're comparing a router
> against a high-end layer 3 switch on just Ethernet.  Everything they
> tested was things the 7600 can do on the PFC.

Note that PFC3B/PFC3B-XL can do many things (IPv4/IPv6 uni/multicast,
MPLS, various forms of tunnel encapsulations, IPv4/IPv6 Netflow (they
can only export IPv4 flows for now though), many kinds of QoS)...

> I'd expect the Cisco to destroy the Juniper on that.  Now if they'd
> tested OC-x interfaces, that'd have been a totally different story,
> I bet.

We have a few OC-12c and OC-48c POS interfaces (OSMs) on the 7600, and
they perform fine.  They are quite expensive though, the port density
isn't that impressive, and they cannot use the Sup720 switching fabric
(but the 32 Gbps legacy bus supports quite a few of them).  Forwarding
is done by the PFC even for these interfaces.

The SPA/SIP modules that Simon mentioned should improve choice of
ports, port density, and performance (I think these carrier cards *do*
have fabric attachments).
-- 
Simon.