[c-nsp] PA-MC-8T1

[Graham Wooden]

Gert, good thinking. I keep forgetting about the c7200 platform.
There are some good deals on ones with the NPE200s in them. Heck, cheap
enough to have a spare ...

Thanks again and take care,

-graham


On 11/26/09 12:08 PM, "Gert Doering" <gert at greenie.muc.de> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 10:09:12PM -0600, Graham Wooden wrote:
>> Just wanted to confirm before I spend the money ....
>> 
>> I am looking at the WAN card PA-MC-8T1 for some T1 aggregation points,
>> inserted into FlexWAN/6500.  As I am reading the data sheet for it, it looks
>> like it can do non-channelized connections, right?  Need to consolidate down
>> some non-fractional/channelized T1s...
> 
> I have no experience with the PA-MC-8T1, but we use a lot of MC-8E1s in
> our network.  It can do "full rate" E1s (1984 time slots) and of course
> sub-rate.  The total number of interfaces is limited to a number that I
> forgot, so you can't do 8 x 30 DS0 interfaces - what we did at the time
> was to run 6x full rate and 2x channelized E1s on them.
> 
> Now for the FlexWAN: seriously reconsider whether you want to go there,
> or whether you want to get a used 7200 instead and just put it on top
> of the 6500, giving you 4 or 6 PA slots for the price of a single FlexWAN
> with two slots.  The problem with the FlexWAN is not that it wouldn't work,
> but that Cisco has a nasty habit of discontinueing support for 6500 blades
> that are less-than-mainstream in new IOS trains - FlexWAN is already
> unsupported in most recent IOS versions (SXH, I think, dropped FW support)
> and you would need to use "enhanced FlexWAN".
> 
> (I certainly can understand that old hardware needs to die at some point,
> but if all you have is a 6500, and you need SXH/SXI to support one half
> of your hardware, and 'no more recent than SXF' to support the *other*
> half, you're sort of stuck in "I hate Cisco" land.  If you have multiple
> baskets, it's much easier to balance IOS reality vs. real world needs)
> 
> ((I also think the FlexWAN was a very nice idea.  Fortunately enough,
> for the longest time it was just too expensive to be more interesting
> than "just get another 7200" - and when we saw that it was already being
> dropped, we congratulated ourselves for not having fallen into every single
> 6500 BU trap))
> 
> gert