[c-nsp] 2851 throughput / guidance

[Alex Campbell]

> The 2851 doesn't gain you much over the 2821 (except 
> price) if this really is a short-term solution. 

There is a pretty significant price difference and I am inclined to
agree.  I was thinking that 2851 might handle the the BGP side bit
better as its processor is faster, but I can't find any documentation as
to how much difference there really is between the two CPUs.

Is anyone on the list running a 2821 with 2 x full internet routing
tables?



-----Original Message-----
From: Justin Shore [mailto:justin at justinshore.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, 28 February 2007 12:28 PM
To: Alex Campbell
Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
Subject: Re: [c-nsp] 2851 throughput / guidance

First off skip the Advanced Security code and get Advanced IP.  Advanced
IP has everything Advanced Security does and more.  Not doing it now
will likely be a pain in the future.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/sw/iosswrel/ps5460/index.htm
l

The 2851 doesn't gain you much over the 2821 (except price) if this
really is a short-term solution.  The 2851 does give you support for
additional MNE modules, particularly the ones with StackWise interfaces.

  You also get another 25Mbps out of it but hopefully you'll be well on
your way to a better solution by then:

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/765/tools/quickreference/routerperforma
nce.pdf

You could look at a decommissioned 7500 if you don't mind paying more
for a SmartNet.

The HWIC-1FE gives you an additional L3 interface as compared to the
HWIC-4ESW which gives you 4 L2 interfaces if memory serves me correctly
(but just in case).

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/modules/ps2641/products_module_in
stallation_guide_chapter09186a008068dde6.html
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps5853/products_data_sheet0900aecd80
16bf0b.html

I'm actually faced with a similar problem.  I'm involved with a new data
center that originally had 6524s and 4948s.  That got scaled back to
2821s and 3560Gs.  My projected life of these devices (the routers at
least) is around 6 months, tops.  However by then the experiment should
have proven itself and we can move on to a better solution that
hopefully will be a 6509-13 which will greatly help and simplify the
overall design.

Justin


Alex Campbell wrote:
> Does anyone have any advice/experiences they could share with running 
> Cisco 2851s as border routers on a small hosting network?
> 
> We're looking at 2851s with 768MB DRAM and Advanced Security
featureset.
> We would be running two on our border, each taking a full internet 
> routing table from a different upstream and some IX prefixes.
> 
> We won't be doing QoS, voice, VPNs etc, but we will have the stateful 
> firewall features turned on as well as reasonably long ACLs.
> 
> About 95% of the traffic through the devices will be HTTP and HTTPS, 
> probably in the 10mbps - 30mbps range.  The 2851s wouldn't be a really

> long term solution, and once we start to hit the 70-90mbps range we 
> would be ready to replace them with something much bigger.
> 
> Also, what are the real life advantages/disadvantages with using the 
> HWIC-4ESW in this situation instead of the frighteningly expensive 
> HWIC-1FEs?
> 
> The 2851 isn't my ideal solution but the 38xxs are too pricey.  A 
> refurb
> 7204 with NPE-400 is only slightly more expensive to purchase than a 
> new 2851, but Smartnet on it is 5x more expensive.  I'd love to go 
> with a Juniper J-4350-JB which is the same price as the 2851 and is 
> much better value, but it might be hard locally to find capable 
> Juniper people.  Any other suggestions would be most welcome.