[c-nsp] ASR1k IOS recommendation

[Mark Tinka]

On Thursday, November 18, 2010 03:41:31 pm Garry wrote:

> we'll be receiving two ASR1k boxes these days (another
> one to be ordered shortly), and I was wondering which
> IOS I should be using ... we did some tests on a router
> provided by Cisco, which hasn't been long ago, and it
> seems like they're rolling out new version daily ...
> currently, there's 2.4 through 2.6 and 3.1S available
> for download, with different minor versions ...
> requirements are "regular" stuff like BGP, OSPF, MPLS
> support ... any comments as to which release would be
> the "most stable"?

We've been using 3.1S, both in a core and peering role. A 
few things I'd advise:

	- Stay away from the software IOS redundancy. It's
	  nice in theory, but eats up too much memory (half
	  of the control plane memory) just to run. Terrible
	  when you're running several peers all sending you
	  a full BGP table.

	- There is still no support for MPLS-TE on 802.1AX
	  interfaces.

	- There is no support for ingress statistics of
  	  marked/remarked packets by MQC. However, don't
	  fret, the hardware is actually marking/remarking
	  them.

	- A couple of changes to where files are stored have
	  been introduced in 3.xS, so RANCID will complain a
	  lot. No workarounds for now (I have a case open),
	  you'll just have to hack RANCID.

Apart from that, been chugging along rather nicely. We 
particularly like the RP2 - very powerful control plane. 
Good things to come with paired with the new ESP40.

We have both the ASR1002 and ASR1006. We're having a tough 
time going for the ASR1004 - the only thing it offers is 
more slots, but for a box that size, you'll likely need 
control plane hardware redundancy. So why not just get the 
ASR1006? Besides, the 2nd IOS XE instance is quite nasty, 
IMO.

v4/v6/MPLS/802.1AX/QoS/BGP/IS-IS/RSVP here.

Cheers,

Mark.
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