[c-nsp] 4507 Sup6-E vs. 6506 Sup32-10GE

[James Slepicka]

Hello all,

I'm about to build out some new office space and am looking at options 
for access layer switches (just one switch for now, but this will be the 
model for a larger roll-out).  Basic requirements:

- About 120 GigE ports
- PoE
- Layer 3 (OSPF support req'd)
- Redundant Sup
- 10Gb uplinks to 6500 core/dist

The 6506 w/ Sup32 has some potential advantages: NetFlow, GRE in 
hardware (for network virtualization), 6500 platform for future 
expansion/upgrades, but the the 32Gb bus _seems_ pretty limiting (Sup720 
w/ 65xx line cards would exceed the budget).  The 4507 w/ Sup6E looks 
good from a performance and feature standpoint (NetFlow and hardware GRE 
being the notable exceptions), but I have concerns about the longevity 
of the platform.  I don't want to do a large deployment on hardware 
that's going to be EOL'd in a few years... I have no idea if that's 
actually going to happen, but I've heard rumors (feel free to refute this!)

Without going in to too much detail, the user community is a mix of 
general office users and software developers.  Some of the applications 
have relatively high bandwidth requirements, but nothing too special; in 
reality, the oversubscription ratio for either solution is probably 
fine.  In some cases, there may be high volume (>100Mb) multicast 
traffic, but to a limited set of users.  I'm leaning towards the 
4500/Sup6E, but I have this nagging feeling that the 6500/Sup32 is the 
'right' solution.

For either solution, pricing is more or less the same... what would you do?

Thanks,
James