[c-nsp] Nexus 7000

[Peter Lothberg]

> Tim Stevenson wrote:
> > At 10:18 PM 1/28/2008 -0600, mack observed:
> >> No mention of MPLS though which gives the CRS-1 a leg up on the 
> >> backbone routing market.
> > 
> > NO MPLS (though the h/w is capable). No immediate plans for it either.
> 
> This would be a show-stopper for us in our Data Center.  We have to have 
> MPLS support for MPLS VPN.  How else are they planning on maintaining 
> VRF separation between customers across multiple chassis in a hosted 
> environment?  The only other option would be to use the Nexus as a dumb 
> L2 switch with a 6500 upstream for all L3VPN functionality.  I would 
> imagine the Nexus would be a rather expensive dumb L2 switch.  What 
> about extending the customer's VRF to a sister DC in a 
> geographically-diverse location?  MPLS again.

You don't need MPLS to do this, any encpsulation works. For example
there are large world_wide deployments providing this using L2TPv3 as
transport.  

> We're also talking with our upstream peers about them providing L2VPNs 
> for customers to our DC.  We'd meet the providers are our fiber meet 
> points with MPLS-enabled circuits.  Again, requiring some router other 
> than the Nexus.
> 
> Say it with me everyone, MPLS MPLS MPLS.  It's silly to build any device 
> without MPLS support.

MPLS is old school, it limits you to be in your own MPLS-fishball
network. 

-P