[c-nsp] 3550 CPU Usage & IPSec

[Phil Mayers]

randal k wrote:
> Hive Mind,
> I have a customer who started selling a landed a largish VPN contract
> for people all over the world. Since then, he pushes about 40mbps of
> IPSec traffic, which is growing steadily. Around the same time I
> noticed that CPU usage on the distribution 3550 that he is attached to
> started going up (has always been ~1%); it is now running between
> 20-35% depending on the time of day.
> 
> My only guess is that 3550s switch IPSec packets in software. Is this the case?

Are we talking about the Cisco 3550 switch i.e. runs IOS 12.1 or 12.2S, 
has 24 10/100 ports and 2 gig etc?

If so, yes, it does IPSec in software, and it's certainly not supported 
as a VPN platform/concentrator - I'm frankly surprised it works at all.