[c-nsp] Catalyst 5513 questions - looking at buying one for lab use/tinkering

[Tristan Gulyas]

All,

Looking at purchasing a 5513 for my home lab as I think it'll be a nice 
platform to play on and definitely comes in a lot cheaper than a 6000/6500. 
The unit that is available to me has a few 5225R's and 5224s in it, an RSM 
and a sup3+NFFC without an uplink module (and two PSUs).  I want it for the 
RSM and the sup3 for my 5000 but he's offering it at a good price and  is 
unwilling to ship individual modules (sigh). As such, I have a few 
questions:

1.  Is CatOS likely to vanish from the Cisco certification map in a few 
years?  I understand that it won't run the latest and greatest but I haven't 
got too much CatOS experience.

2. How *useful* are these boxes?  i.e. can I throw a WS-X5410 (9 port GBIC 
blade) in there and expect to get wire-speed layer 2 performance?

3. How does the RSM compare to a 7500 or 4700, software features wise?  I'm 
not using this thing to route a gazillion packets per second but I would 
like to do things such as NAT on it and want to be able to do it in a lab 
scenario.  What about routing protocols that it'll support?  What sort of 
router does the RSM compare with in terms of performance and features?

4.  Is it worth considering putting some ATM kit in there to explore?  I 
understand I can effectively build an LS1010-worth of modules in the lower 
slots.  What about the multilayer support offered with the LS1010/cat8540 
gear?

Any thoughts, suggestions etc, appreciated - but I haven't got the cash for 
a 6000 or 6500 chassis (which is a shame).  This is simply to tinker with 
and gain a bit of experience with CatOS-based switching and with a bit of 
ATM as well (I already have a LANE module for my cat5000 however).

Thanks,
Tristan