[c-nsp] Is the 6704 really as terrible as everyone says?

[Charles Spurgeon]

On Thu, Dec 02, 2010 at 04:04:27PM +0000, Phil Mayers wrote:
> On 02/12/10 15:41, Drew Weaver wrote:
> >I've read several posts on here that lead me to believe that the
> >WS-6704-10G is essentially the worst linecard ever produced.
> 
> I think that's probably a bit strong! 6148 for starters...
> 
> >
> >The problem is, I only need 2 ports of 10G and just to replace
> >2x1Gbps uplinks that almost never get anywhere near their line rate
> >capacity.
> 
> We use them. They have some well documented limitations, but TBH we've 
> never had a big problem with them. We're moving to 6716 for new buys 
> now, for density and buffer size reasons, but we still have a bunch in 
> the network performing fine.

We used to think that the newer 6716 card had better buffers until we
found this Cisco whitepaper that states that the receive buffer in
transparent mode on the 6716 ports is 950KB vs the 2MB buffer on the
6704:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps708/white_paper_c11_538840.html

Our Cisco support channel confirmed those numbers.

-Charles

Charles E. Spurgeon / UTnet
UT Austin ITS / Networking
c.spurgeon at its.utexas.edu / 512.475.9265