[c-nsp] Your opinions on router throughput

[Gert Doering]

HI,

On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 11:41:45PM -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> Would this really be switched through the NPE?  I had thought
> that CEF make the flows go from card to card over the internal
> router bus, not through the CPU.

CEF is just a different way the CPU looks at the packets - but it's
still "CPU switched", as the 7200 PAs have no local intelligence.

(CEF is *still* way faster than "process switching", but that's due to
much more optimized processing and not due to hardware support - as opposed
to 7600s, where you have "hardware CEF" and "main CPU CEF" [simplified]).

Regarding the original question: a NPE-300 should handle 45 Mbit of load
just fine, *even* if it's all small packets - the "routerperformance.pdf"
file claims 180 Mbit throughput with 64 byte packets for the NPE-300,
and those numbers tend to be fairly realistic.

gert
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Gert Doering - Munich, Germany                             gert at greenie.muc.de
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