[c-nsp] Recommended Cisco boxes for a smallmultihoming solution?

[Łukasz Bromirski]

Ray Burkholder wrote:

>> To get to the point - ASR1002 would be the box.
> Are ASR1002's actually worth 3x the price of something like a
> 7206VXR/NPE-G2?  When you add appropriate licensing costs, pricing can
> become 5x to 10x the price.  Does it push that many extra packets that much
> faster?

NPE-G2 is CPU (or - software) router. It does have capability to
push 2Mpps in theory, now with new features (even with optimized CEF
feature tree) it will grind down to 1.2~1.8Mpps. ASR1002 does switch
traffic in hardware (via QFP on ESPs) and adding 'services' doesn't
cost either any or significant slowdown in forwarding the traffic.
It can push up to 7Mpps (ESP-5) or 15Mpps (ESP-10) without features
like IP Multicast QoS, ACLs, QoS, uRPF, and goes down to 'only'
around 4Mpps or 8Mpps respectively if those features are configured
in switching path. That's a difference.

ASR1002-5G/K9, bundle with Advanced Enterprise Services and 4GB of RAM,
and 4xGE ports (SFP that is) is 40k$ in GPL, and 7206VXR bundled with
NPE-G2 and the same software to have IPv6/etc is 27k$. Which is 13k$
difference, not '5x to 10x the price'. And with NPE-G2 you're limited to
2GB of RAM and software packet processing which of course isn't that
bad considering the fact what kind of traffic and how much of the
traffic the box has to push through - it's 100Mbit/s as Magnus said
on the beginning of the thread.

> Also, in using Cisco's Feature Navigator to compare feature sets, say ADV
> IP, the XE 2.2.1 line seems to lack a bunch of stuff that might be in say
> SRD 12.2.33 or SXH 12.2.33 like MPLS TE or further IP6 features.

Apart from some fancier designs, what for do you need MPLS TE on BGP
peering box? It has to push packets fast, store millions of forwarding
entries and have ability to protect control plane. Shouldn't that
be the priority?

-- 
"Don't expect me to cry for all the     |               Łukasz Bromirski
  reasons you had to die" -- Kurt Cobain |    http://lukasz.bromirski.net