[c-nsp] NPE-G1/G2 vs NSE-1

[Rodney Dunn]

Not aimed at Justin but to set the record straight..

On Wed, May 30, 2007 at 02:35:16PM -0400, Justin M. Streiner wrote:
> On Thu, 31 May 2007, Kanagaraj Krishna wrote:
> 
> >   What is the difference between this engine models on the 7200 series? From
> > what I've gathered, the NPE supports multiservice requirement like IPv6 etc.
> > As for the NSE, its more towards hardware based forwarding resulting in higher
> > packet transmission and throughput. Am i right?
> 
> The NSE-1 was originally designed to try to improve throughput by using 
> Parallel eXpress Forwarding (PXF),

Ture. We still leverage that technology in other places. 10k, OSM's, NSE's for
73xx.

> but the implementation of PXF seems to 
> have been buggy from the start 

There were bugs as in any new implementation.

There is a misconception that it was abandoned because of bugs.
That is not the case. It was running wonderfully and still is in a lot
of networks.

>- to the point where it's common to hear of 
> people running NSE-1s with PXF disabled.

That was partly because a lot of customers had it enabled and it
wasn't buying them anything because their features were not in the
PXF path and there were more problems punting the traffic than just
turning it off. Why add complexitiy without a real gain.

>  In that case, the NSE is roughly 
> equivalent to an NPE-225 in terms of packet forwarding performance. 

Exactly.

> The 
> NPE-G1 and G2 are much more powerful in that regard.

That's where the change in direction came. More features at faster
rates were in the pipeline with that architecture.

The ones still using it have more than a single 4x4 array so they can
get more features in it like the 10k does so it's very useful.


Rodney

> 
> Search through the archives of this list from this month and you'll find 
> at least one other NSE vs. NPE thread.  You can get to the archives by 
> going to the appropriate URL that's at the bottom of each message that
> gets sent to the list.
> 
> jms
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