[c-nsp] Catalyst 5500 RSM speed limitations.

[Lamar Owen]

On Thursday 09 August 2007, Troy Beisigl wrote:
> Does anyone know what the total bandwidth limitations are on the WS-X5302?

The RSM is essentially a 7500's RSP2 with a Cat5K interface processor on it; 
which means 5K pps/2.56Mbps process switching and 220K pps/112Mbps CEF.

As already mentioned, the RSFC is about twice as fast, but IOS limited to 12.1 
instead of the RSM's 12.2.  The RSFC also requires a Supervisor IIG or IIIG 
to work (it physically mounts on the supervisor; this means a max of 2 RSFCs 
in the chassis, in slots 15 and 16, with even the one on the standby 
supervisor being active) , whereas the RSM will work with any Cat5k 
supervisor, and you can have several in the chassis (there is a limit, I 
think it's seven or eight).  If you have NFFC I or II (the Sup IIIG includes 
NFFC II functionality) you can enable MLS and dramatically increase your 
throughput (up to the Supervisor's switching limit, typically 1.2Gbps per bus 
for the three Cat5500-series buses) for certain flows.  See Kennedy Clark's 
Catalyst LAN Switching CCIE book for the details.

Incidentally, the RSM will do reasonable NAT reasonably quickly.  I'm using a 
Cat 5509 with a pair of RSM's (one with the VIP2 piggyback) here, and I'm 
getting pretty good results, if not stellar bandwidth, some good results.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Chief Information Officer
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu