[c-nsp] Cisco core router (for smaller sized colocation provider) recomendations please

[Ryan O'Connell]

On 23/01/2006 23:11, josh harrington wrote:

>[option #1 - Cisco 7206 VXR]
>--------------------------------
>Estimated: $4,000 [$6,000 with 400 mhz, $12,000 with the 1 ghz cpu upgrade]
>1 Cisco 7206 VXR NPE 300 mhz w/max ram
>2 AC Power
>2 Fast Ethernet Adapters (1 included on the NPE)
>  
>

Don't buy an NPE-300, particularly if you want a GigE interface in 
future or anything like reasonable performance with 2 full feeds it's 
just throwing your money away. The NPE-400 will take twice as much RAM 
so it's worth the extra - once you get down to around 80MB free on an 
NPE-300 it's quite possible for memory fragmentation to kill it even if 
there appears to be lots of "free" RAM.

I believe - but I've never tried it and it's years since I've seen a 
non-VXR chassis - you can use non-VXR power supplies in VXR 7200s. I'm 
sure someone here will confirm/deny.

Not sure if you realise but there actually isn't an FE interface 
included on the NPE, It's part of the I/O card which for the NPE-300 and 
-400 you need to buy seperately. The NPE-G1 comes with three GigE 
interfaces on the card itself, (They'll run at 100Mb/s if required) so 
you already have the three interfaces you need even without adding 
expansion cards - that may affect your cost calculations if you haven't 
already taken it into account.

>+ can keep old 7200 as a hot standby, minimizing long term downtime
>  
>

Your old NPE-150 will be essentially useless once you start talking BGP.

>- END OF LIFE/sale/support on most of the 7200 product line over 5 years 
>ago! The VXR model is darn close to end of life i suspect
>  
>

The 7200 is still a flagship product as far as Cisco are concerned - 
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/index.html shows it's 
still what they're pushing for generic applications, not the 7300. The 
NPE-G1 is also still fairly recent and certainly not underpowered for 
modern applications. None of the other smaller 7x00 class routers Cisco 
have pushed (7100, which seemed to hit EoS pretty quick and the 7300) 
really seem that poplar.

>- minimal horse power here for the money, prone to death by packet attack
>  
>

The NPE-G1 will cope just about as well as any software-forwarding-based 
platform will. Certainly it should be able to ACL most DoS attacks at 
100Mb/s. (Doesn't help much if your uplink is full, but then nothing you 
can do without talking to your upstream will...)

>[option #2 - Cisco GSR (12008)]
>--------------------------------
>Estimated: $7,000 to $14,000 [varies if I start with GigE or just 100mbit]
>1 Cisco12008 GSR 40Gbps
>1 Clock Scheduler Card (GSR8)
>3 Switch Fabric Card (GSR8)
>2 AC Power
>1 4 port OC-3c/STM-1 Single Mode
>1 GE card or a 4 port x 100 mbit
>  
>

Now this really is a dead product, IMO. (I'm sure someone will disagre 
with me here.) They are also terrribly, terribly difficult to 
troubleshoot if something breaks in the hardware because they're so 
complicated - don't even think of running one without a hardware 
replacement contact. (I've had whole routers complete with all cards 
RMAed before because Cisco couldn't figure out what was bust either, 
after swapping out half the cards) also look at the size - think how 
much money the rack space will cost every month...

>+ much higher total bandwidth/packet processing power compared to 7200, for
>similar money
>  
>

...however, adding extra interfaces is much more expensive, as you 
noticed already. :-) Beware early line cards, (FastEthernet and 
single-port GigE) it's about 2 years since I last had to work with the 
12ks, but I've heard rumours that some of them can no longer manage 
enough RAM for a full internet routing table. (The line cards themselves 
need a copy of the FIB, not just the routing engine)

>- product is long since obsolete and outclassed by the 760x cisco router, as
>well as just about any juniper router in the m20+ tier.
>  
>

The 12k series themselves aren't dead, they're built to perform 
different jobs. The 7600 is essentialy a big layer 3 switch, and you 
need to keep that in mind when both speccing it out and working on it 
day-to-day - it's designed to take ethernet frames in and out. If you 
really need those STM1 interfaces you've included on the spec above, 
then a 12k might actually be a better bet than a 7600 because WAN 
interfaces on the 7600 are expensive and can be troublesome to use.

>- I'd bet if i buy this, cisco will classify it end of life within 3 months 
>  
>

The 12008 was End-of-Sales last year. Cisco won't be offering new 
support contracts past the end of next month. If you do really need a 
12k, look at the 12006.

>[option #3 - Cisco 6509 switch'router' w/MSFC2]
>------------------------------------------------------------
>Estimated: $10,000 - $15,000 (and up depending on config)
>1 WS-C6509 Cisco Catalyst 6500 9-Slot Chassis
>1 WS-C6K-9SLOT-FAN Catalyst 6000 Fan Tray for 9-Slot Systems
>1 WS-C6X09-RACK Catalyst 6x09 Rack Mount Kit
>  
>

You'll probably find a 7606/6506 is better for most needs - the 7606 at 
least is considerably more compact than the 9-slot version.

Don't touch the 7603, it has a different backplane and doesn't support 
some cards. (Cisco don't make this very clear in the product literature)

>2 WS-CAC-1300W 1300W AC Power Supply
>1 CAB-7513AC AC Power Cord
>1 WS-X6K-S1A-MSFC2 Catalyst 6500 Supervisor Engine-2, 2GE, plus MSFC-2 / PFC
>(WS-X6K-S1A-2GE + MSFC-2 & PFC)
>1 MEM-C6K-FLC24M  24MB Flash Card
>  
>

24MB of Flash almost certanly isn't enough. (I have Sup720s with 64MB on 
board, I could do with buying 256MB Flash cards for them because the IOS 
is so huge...)

>1 WS-X6408A-GBIC Catalyst 6500 8-Port Gigabit Ethernet Module (Req. GBICs)
>1 WS-X6348-RJ-45 Catalyst 6500 48-Port 10/100 RJ-45 Module
>  
>

It *might* be cheaper to order one WS-X6148-GE-TX/WS-X6548-GE-TX rather 
than two cards. In any event, I'm not sure the 6408A supports copper 
GBICs, which might be a problem for you if your existing upstream is 
being delivered on copper, and you'll usually always have a couple of 
GBIC/SFP ports on the Supervisor you can use if you really need optics.

>- bgp4 support appears limited in previous versions, but the MSFC2 processor
>supposedly can handle (2) bgp4 sessions properly [makes me nervous]
>  
>

It'll handle a lot more than that, certainly, although you might need 
more than the default amount of RAM on the MSFC. (I think they tend to 
come fully loaded these days though) The MSFC that handles routing 
updates is a seperate CPU from the Supervisor so BGP troubles won't 
cause latency for production traffic flow.

>- no support for anything but 100mbit, or gigE links, wont work with t3, or
>oc3 lines [since i don't know what ill buy from my next carrier this is a
>draw back since i may very well get a circuit this switch/router can't use]
>  
>

You can put WAN interfaces in a 7600/6500, it's just expensive. I'm not 
sure if the Sup1-MSFC2 can support it though.

>- 'all eggs in 1 basket' theory, if it breaks you loose all your ether
>switches! [at least with separate routers/switches i can swap in an old 7206
>router spare and get back online fast in a worst case scenario.
>  
>

With pretty much all the scenarios you're looking at, your old router 
won't be able to even produce a jury-rig service.