[c-nsp] Packet vs. Route Memory

[Robert E.Seastrom]

Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike at swm.pp.se> writes:

> On Mon, 23 Jan 2006, Tantsura, Jeff wrote:
>
>> 2. You should ask yourself whether it's worth to go with E1/E2 cards, lack
>> of support of any decent feature and as far as I remember they could be
>> upgraded up to 256Mb.
>
> It's a good place to reuse your 2*128M GRP memory when you upgrade to 
> 2*256M due to BGP table growth (E0-E2 cards).

It's also all a matter of expectation management.  12008/12012s are
cheap these days, and the cards are cheaper yet.  It may come as a
surprise to some that (disregarding routing table growth for a moment)
they have the same performance characteristics that they did six years
ago.  For applications that require cheap shlepping around of a couple
to a few hundred megs over the next year without a forklift upgrade
as traffic grows, the $250 Engine 0 OC12 card may be just what the
doctor ordered.  You don't wear dress shoes to the gym...

                                        ---Rob