[c-nsp] 2821 performance as border router

Jason LeBlanc jml at packetpimp.org
Mon Aug 28 13:28:59 EDT 2006


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I'm using a 2811 with a FastE uplink, no BGP on mine but I am running
GRE tunnels, NAT and a decent sized ACL.  I pushed it to 96 Mb/s at ~85%
cpu just to see what it would handle.  My thinking is that BGP will not
add much cpu load, mostly memory.  If you really push past about 75 Mb/s
you may lose enough cpu to cause problems, if BGP needs to do any work
and there isn't enough cpu left.  I think 40Mb/s will be handled easily.
 I was shocked that a 2811 would handle over 40 Mb/s, more shocked at
90+  Mb/s.

Paul Cairney wrote:
> Hi, apologies for yet another "what performance can I expect with an unknown traffic profile" post however there doesnt seem to be many references to real world performance of the 28xx platform in anything other than T3/E3 CPE roles. I would appreciate any comments on the suitability of this choice given the requirements below and also if anyone has operational experience of the 28xx platform in roles other than CPE/voice.
> 
> 
> I am looking at using a pair of 2821's to act as border routers for a couple of sites, each taking two full tables from upstreams and having an iBGP session so would probably max the ram out at 1Gb.
> 
> Feature wise its fairly minimal, BGP/OSPF/HSRP with basic bogon filtering and ACL's on the management interface.
> 
> Traffic pattern is primarily HTTP/SMTP and obviously no level of DDoS protection is expected from this platform (so presumably most of the ISR type features such as IDS and firewalling will be turned off).
> 
> 
> While Im sure many people will suggest 7200 platform the traffic is expected to be ~20mbit initialy and I would hope to be able to justify upgrades to something more useful like 6500/7200 before the traffic level approaches 100mbit. As it stands the 2821 appears to be a good fit for the initial low traffic requirement yet can take enough ram to be vaugly useful given the current table size.
> 
> 
> What I am least clear on is what sort of performance to expect, consensus suggests it is more than happy with T3/E3 line rate even with cpu hungry features on. Obviously its not going to approach the 170k pps quoted by the marketing droids, but I would be interested to hear anyone doing > 100mbit on the 28xx platform.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Paul
> 
> 
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