[c-nsp] Is annual reloads of Cisco 6500 necessary

[Mark Tinka]

On Sunday 13 December 2009 05:00:01 am Gert Doering wrote:

> We never reload anything, unless a *specific* reason
>  exists - e.g. "software update unavoidable" or "device
>  misbehaving and we can't find any non-reload way to
>  mitigate".

Same here.

In most cases, for us, reasons for reload will be driven by 
software upgrades. These software upgrades would be driven 
by needing to support:

	* new hardware, e.g., newer line cards, newer optical
	  modules, e.t.c. 

	* fixing terrible bugs for features that we have turned on
	  (if a bug exists for a feature we haven't enabled or
	  don't plan to enable, and the bug doesn't "play" when
	  the affected feature is disabled, we don't upgrade).

	* introducing new features, although for this, we'd
	  normally prefer to wait at least for another 2 or 3
	  rebuilds of the code base following the initial release
	  of the feature, just to work out any issues that could
	  have arisen from early deployment of the feature.

Apart from that, we're happy. For instance, we run SXI2a on 
our 6500's, and that's fine with us, even though SXI3 is 
out. With just Layer 2 Ethernet switching going on, we don't 
need much else, unless of course, SXI5 fixes something 
really terrible in a core function.

However, we've seen a number of upgrades in the past year 
going on for IOS 12.2(33)SRC due to bugs, as well as JUNOS 
9.x due to bugs also. But this seems to be stabilizing now, 
on both fronts.

One reason where I'll see most (if not all) service 
providers needing to upgrade code is to introduce 4-byte ASN 
support. Yes, you could work around it by supporting 
AS23456, but if you're looking to keep the NOC folk happy, 
we may not be able to run away from moving some or all of 
our boxes to later code just for this.

Cheers,

Mark.
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