[c-nsp] Cosmetic bug or unsupported NPE?

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gert Doering" <gert at greenie.muc.de>
To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm at toybox.placo.com>
Cc: "Saku Ytti" <saku+cisco-nsp at ytti.fi>; <cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net>
Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 2:43 AM
Subject: Re: [c-nsp] Cosmetic bug or unsupported NPE?


> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 01:50:23AM -0800, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> > I really have to object to this FUD,
> >
> > I run 2 NPE300's in 7206VXR's, 2 uplinks and ibgp and getting full table
> >
> > Here's output on ios 12.2.32:
>
> That's not 12.2*S* - 12.2 main has less memory impact, because it has the
> old CEF code (and no MPLS, no IPv6, and whatever else people might want).
>

"no MPLS, no IPv6, and whatever else people might want"

Your making an awfully big assumption there that everyone wants IPv6 and
MPLS.  What is the argument your trying to make anyway?  That since
"everyone
wants MPLS that Cisco is right to chuck out the NPE300"

My point was that lots of people DON'T need all that and therefore the
reports of the NPE300 being imminently useless are a bunch of marketing
and techno FUD hogwash that Cisco apologists are just spewing out there
to try to get the weak-minded to swallow the party line.

Well here's my response to that - Hey Cisco, if you decide to deliberately
stick
some code in your 12.2 lines to make some future version of 12.2 to crash on
my NPE300 well I'll just chuck the router out and go look at Junipers
products.
How you like them apples?

I don't mind running a NPE that's "officially" (wink, nod) unsupported.  I
would
certainly not expect to be able to jump to some far in advance IOS for it.
But I
would also expect Cisco programmers to use some intelligence and realize
that
when they have an IOS train that is basically in it's twilight years (12.2,
both
mainline and service provider) and all they are doing is releasing
security/bug
fixes for it, that quite a lot of people are going to be running it on older
hardware
that is after EOL, and it is completely unnecessary to go sticking opcodes
into
the machine language that will cause the CPU to segfault or equivalent.
They
can certainly maintain the fiction that they "aren't testing" just to keep
the
masses from burning up their money in support calls - but do some lite duty
testing anyway (like making sure the newer IOS boots on the CPU card)
on new releases.

> [..]
> > The global BGP table rises in size but not as fast as is made out to be.
> > TheEOL on NPE300 is a marketing issue for Cisco it was not made due to
256mb
> > being inadequate for the global bgp table.
>
> Now that's a completely different story, though.  And I agree that it's
> annoying - that they stopped selling it is fine, but stopping IOS support
> *right in the middle of a train* isn't something we appreciate.
>

Even Microsoft when faced with loud screaming from it's customers went
ahead and extended support for their older OS's AFTER THE FACT.  There
is absolutely no technical reason to pick an arbitrary date and say "today
we
stop supporting our product"  Espically when you have a continuing revenue
stream coming in from support contracts that people are paying to maintain
their access to your software fixes.  That sort of attitude just smacks of
utter
arrogance.  We customers don't need it.  Even Microsoft wasn't getting money
for older versions of Windows 95, and Windows 98 and so on and they
went ahead and extended support times anyway!  Cisco, who IS getting
money, just doesen't get it.

The proper way to determine EOL on products is when the vast majority of
your customers aren't using them anymore.  Nobody is demanding Cisco spend
money and effort supporting the last 10% of customers who won't let anyone
pry their NPE300's out of their cold dead fingers.  That is obviously not
good
business.  But clearly the majority of NPE300's that were sold are still in
operation.  Every other industry in the world, from automotive onward, pays
attention to what their customer base is doing and makes allowances for it.
And the companies that don't end up like Novell who tried shoving NW4
down their customers throats by deliberately claiming they would no longer
support NW3 - and watched as the market said 'f u, Novell' and devastated
their company.

> > Choose to stop using NPE300 and spend money on the newer CPU if you
wish,
> > maybe you can scare your boss who doesen't know how to query a router.
But
> > before spewing more FUD let's have some real, not forged, output from
your
> > router that's showing your near running out of ram because I certainly
am
>
> NPE-225 with 12.2(18)S, reduced IPv4 BGP table (200k prefixes), full
> IPv6 table (about 700 prefixes), no MPLS, no turbo ACLs, runs at about
> 15-20 Mb free memory.
>
> 12.2(25)S needs about 20-30 Mb more memory, due to the new CEF
implementation.
>

Ted