[c-nsp] c7604 "starter kit"

[Saku Ytti]

On (2008-09-04 13:23 +0200), Philippe Strauss wrote:

Hey,

> chassis 7604?

This is fine it's 'S' chassis like 7606S and 7609S even though the 'S'
is not visible there and it's black and not white :). Technically it's
the same.

> 3bxl or 3cxl?
> sup720 or rsp720?

sup720 comes 3c(xl) and rsp720 comes with 3b(xl). Differences between C and
B are rather minor and mostly related to L2 (like more MACs). However
there are some rarely mentioned things fixed in 3C that affect eg. MPLS.
Big benefit of RSP720 is MSFC4, which means you have faster control-plane
which can take more memory. I would definitely go with RSP720.

> linecard: what are the SPA? distributed forwarding? we don't need it a priori.
> there is a 6 gbic port (2+4) with PXF, what is this beast? probably something
> to avoid.

SPA's house intelligent ports, which means mainly HQoS and vlan local signifance
and of course non-ethernet interface.
If you don't need any feature SPA has, you really should go with LAN card,
due to cost reaons. 

> I've heard once upon a time a 8 port GigE linecard was available and not anymore.
> will the 8 port fixed GigE (not 10/100 but only 1000) of the cat6500 line work
> in a c7600?

If you buy LAN cards, I wouldn't look other than WS-X67.. and WS-X65.. as
they connected to the fabric.

> We don't need 20 ports and that's a bit expensive.
> All port must do layer3, of course.

All LAN cards with 3B/3C will happily do not just L3 but also MPLS.

> Full BGP table, many times (3 full peer plus 100 local peerings w few prefixes).

No problem (you need XL)


 You might also look at ASR1k as next-gen PE to replace VXR. 7600 has
limitation in hardware, especially in terms of IPv6 (no IPv6 uRPF, lookup
key size has compromises in ACL usage and others). When you compare
7600 with SIP/SPA, ASR1k is even cheaper solution and much more flexible.
 One thing to notice is that ASR1k does not currently have EoMPLS support
in any software, but other than that, all generally used features
are supported.
 If I'd need non-ethernet interfaces, vlan local signifance or HQoS and
I wouldn't need EoMPLS, I'd definitely go with ASR1k rather than 7600.

-- 
  ++ytti