[c-nsp] Fwd: Alternantive to REB(route bridge Encapsulation)-2nd try

[Lamar Owen]

On Sunday 17 August 2008 05:05:30 Gert Doering wrote:
> From the comments seen on this list, I don't think that any sort of L2VPN
> on 7500s is a good idea.

> 7500 is pretty much a dead and unsupported platform these days.

Good afternoon, list and Gert.

I have read this list for some time now, and I am very grateful for much 
useful and constructive advice that I have seen that is relevant to what I am 
doing.

However, I must rant just a bit, so please indulge me for a moment.  And I 
fully realize many of you won't care about what I'm going to talk about 
below, and that's ok.

Not all folk using older Cisco gear for core routing are financially able to 
do forklift upgrades.  Some people, in this day of shrinking IT budgets and 
lowering bandwidth costs/margins (at least to NSP's; the enterprise user is 
seeing the opposite problem; for example, my OC3's base tariff went UP $1,000 
per month thanks to tariff changes by the NECA), simply don't have the budget 
to write off their investment in older gear and drop in a newer platform.

Although, PARI WILL accept your donation of older gear after you've done a 
forklift upgrade!

There are non-profits (and for-profits that are turning into non-profits 
involuntarily) out there who would like to hear something a little more 
constructive than 'your platform is EoS; time to upgrade'. If I personally 
ask 'hey, anybody out there ever done L2TPv3 on a 7500/12012 pair that's 
serving an APS protected OC3 to a pair of 7401ASR's serving the other end of 
the APS protected OC3, and what have you found?' I don't want to hear 'you 
need to get a new whizbang 20000 to do that; all four of your routers are too 
old'.  I'd like to hear what people have experienced; and, Gert, your 
experiences in particular have been very enlightening to me. 

I (and other enterprise usera and NSP's in my boat; I use an NSP who is a 
non-profit, for instance) am well aware that I should have something more 
modern; I cannot afford it, especially now that a big hunk of my equipment 
budget just went away thanks to the NECA tariff increase.  And while I know 
that there is a contingent out there with the attitude that if someone can't 
afford rolling forklift upgrades every few years that they shouldn't be in 
business, I have no need for their opinion on that matter.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Chief Information Officer
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
http://www.pari.edu