[c-nsp] Cisco MultiLink PPP

[Gert Doering]

Hi,

On Sun, Mar 27, 2005 at 12:00:16PM -0500, Joe Maimon wrote:
> >Stay away from the 3620.  It's incredibly noisy, quite slow, needs much
> >space in the rack (1RU, but very 'deep'), can't take useful amounts of 
> >memory, has no onboard LAN ports, and is end-of-life.
> >
> >A 2621XM would be a good choice (faster, more memory, and less footprint
> >than the 3620).

I have to correct me here: the 2621XM can *not* take more memory than the
3620.  The 2651XM can.

> >
> 3620 is cheaper resold than XM, 

Yes... (and there is good reason)

> supports 4 FE interfaces, 

... but as soon as you add 2 FEs, it is likely to be more expensive...

... and in addition, it makes no sense at all to put more than 1 FE into
a 3620.  The box is just too slow.

> with 4 WIC 
> slots with apropriate NM's, should have enough ram/flash to handle 12.4 
> when it gets here, not to mention all the 12.3 that the vanilla 26xx cant.

Uh.  I'm not sure which sort of 3620 you're talking about.  Certainly not 
the 3620s we own.

261x/262x can take the same amount of dram and flash than a 3620 can take 
(64Mb DRAM, 32Mb Flash), and there *already* are features that are dropped 
out of the 3620 code base (like "OSPFv3 for IPv6") because the 3620 is 
maxed out.

I'd wager a bet that there will be no 12.4 for 3620...

> Which can translate easily enough into 3 100mbps FD PPPoE connections 
> (something that currently requires dedicated ethernet interfaces to be 
> done properly) and one dot1q lan interface with CBAC/ACL/NAT firewalling 
> plus 4 (or more) T's.
> 
> Toss in an AIM and you should be able to handle up to 30mbps of 
> encryption. Nothing to sneeze at.

I'm unsure whether a 3620 will be able to even carry 30 Mbit/s. of
*unencrypted* traffic - even if it's only LAN-to-LAN, with no PPPoE 
overhead and no multilink.  The AIM won't help you here.

If you're looking for something with lots of Ethernet interfaces and
nice crypto performance, get a 1712.

> So this is a nice enough platform if you are looking for something 
> better than resold 26xx - non XM.

Anything is better than a 3620 (well, maybe except a 25xx) - even a
good old 4700M is more powerful.

> Both the 2620 and 3620 are better than all 17xx due to lack of dot1q 
> support, which is something I tried to raise on this list previously.

Can't comment on that, never tried dot1q on any 17xx.  It would surprise
me if the 1712 can't do it - after all, it has a WIC-4ESW built-in, which
can do dot1q on other platforms.

gert

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Gert Doering - Munich, Germany                             gert at greenie.muc.de
fax: +49-89-35655025                        gert at net.informatik.tu-muenchen.de