[c-nsp] 6500 vs Packeteer

[Justin Shore]

hjan wrote:
>> Basically my concern is having an appliance as single
>> point of failure.  As I increase redundancy in the network
>> infrastructure it would be nice if I can achieve desired
>> QoS/rate-limiting using the switches themselves without additional gear.
> 
> Traffic shaper / policer often has optical bypass by default or as option.
> I use Allot and I'm happy.

I had a PacketShaper 4545 about 5 years ago.  It was a nice piece of 
equipment.  It had an internal mechanism to fail the Ethernet interfaces 
as a closed circuit if the device was rebooted or if it lost power.  Ie, 
a failure would cause a relay to close, disconnecting the internal 
network guts of the PacketShaper from the copper interfaces and linking 
the in and out interfaces together to act as a piece of wire; it would 
not interrupt the flow of traffic if it failed.  Now if you had to 
remove the device from service to replace it with a RMA unit then of 
course you'd have to unplug it and disrupt traffic.  Then again if your 
network is well-built then losing any single link (short of a link to an 
upstream SP) shouldn't be a problem for you.  I haven't gotten to work 
with any of Packeteer's units with fiber interfaces but I imagine they 
support optical bypass units like the SCEs do.

I really liked the PacketShapers.  They were slick.  I own a pair of 
SCEs right now that I'm trying to get online.  I hear they are pretty 
nice too, but not as turnkey.

Justin