[c-nsp] Peoples experiences with the 3825

[Tom Storey]

Hi all,

Looking for some feedback on the 3825.

Im at a phase of planning a new network which will consist of approx  
29 tower sites in a rural part of Australia.

Im looking at the possibility of sticking 3825's in some strategic  
locations to aggregate customer sessions and ship them off to some  
LNS's back in the CBD of the nearest capital city. The core of this  
network will be built around a ring of 155mbit microwave radios, and  
we'll be trunking multiple towers back to said strategic locations for  
termination/aggregation.

Theres likely to be a couple of thousand people in total hanging off  
the network, but Im wondering if the 3825 would be up to this task.  
They seem like relatively beasty boxes.

On average a single router would be handling several hundred sessions  
(PPPoE aggregation into L2TP tunnels back to the LNSs), and would need  
to be able to handle as much of 155mbit as possible due to the ring  
configuration, so if a link dies somewhere I need to be sure that a  
single router will handle all of the traffic.

What are peoples experiences with aggregating PPPoE and routing  
traffic? How much of each have you managed to get onto a single box  
before running out of CPU/RAM? Anything I should be careful about if  
chosing this platform?

If the 3825 is no good I'll probably look at deploying 7201's, they  
should handle what Im looking for, but the 3825 has the advantage of  
NM-xESWs, removing a device from each site. :-)

Cheers,
Tom