[c-nsp] 2851 throughput / guidance

[Paul Cairney]

On Wed, Feb 28, 2007 at 01:11:55PM +1100, Alex Campbell wrote:
> 
> > 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?
> 

I have a couple under fairly light traffic load, for example this one has 3 ~210k transits as well as some iBGP and 768mb ram installed. This is the official ram limit however 2x 512mb sticks seems to work fine should you feel the need to have 1gb ram in all your small pop routers or else you cant sleep at night...


omerouter#sh mem stat
                Head    Total(b)     Used(b)     Free(b)   Lowest(b)  Largest(b)
Processor   46658620   683309536   241918628   441390908   440878736   438996424
      I/O   3F200000    14680064     5820220     8859844     8561872     8565180


somerouter#sh ip bgp sum

BGP table version is 710757, main routing table version 710757
210087 network entries using 25210440 bytes of memory
663555 path entries using 34504860 bytes of memory
156420/37960 BGP path/bestpath attribute entries using 19396080 bytes of memory
73995 BGP AS-PATH entries using 2128358 bytes of memory
1654 BGP community entries using 118314 bytes of memory
12 BGP route-map cache entries using 384 bytes of memory
0 BGP filter-list cache entries using 0 bytes of memory
Bitfield cache entries: current 4 (at peak 6) using 124 bytes of memory
BGP using 81358560 total bytes of memory
BGP activity 224844/14748 prefixes, 1070214/406659 paths, scan interval 60 secs



I would echo the "load up the ram, easy on the features" advice, however these boxes are certainly useful for having among the lowest entry cost for something that will take > 512mb ram  ;)


Paul