[c-nsp] sub-rate OC-12 hardware

[Jeff Bacon]

I'm looking at spinning up a long-haul link, two or three OC-3s
channelized onto an OC12 interface.

The point of using SONET: 
- I need it routed a certain way and I need to know it will work - it's
a DR route avoiding the major NY-Chicago paths. Sure a switched-e vendor
can tell you that they are TE'ing your path a certain way and
guaranteeing your bandwidth, but is it really and will it really work
when you need it to, when farmer drives fertilizer truck into <location>
and takes out half the links between <metro A> and <metro B>, and all
the MPLS vendors try to reroute all their traffic onto what used to be
your quiet alternate path? 
- I could use a SONET-protected-path, but the best way to know that
someone didn't screw up the config for the path switch is to make it so
it always routes that way in the first place.
- I've had so many issues with policed-sub-rate gig switched metro-e
links that I'm getting tired of dealing with it:
	** I have a lot of bursty traffic. Since the interface I have is
1GB, it blows in the interface at 1GB, and the carrier starts dropping
packets. Now how do I tell if the line's having issues or if it's just
the policer? 
	** sure, I can spin up QoS and impose a policer myself. One,
that's a lotta work, two, that just means *I* drop the packets.
	** If I have an OC-12 interface, what goes in one side comes out
the other, guaranteed, or an error counter ticks.
- most carriers for long-haul are running the links as either pure-waves
or OC192s - and if the underlying path is SONET, why should I mess with
translating to enet? 

(Is there a flaw in my logic? Assume I've beaten vendor to give me SONET
for same price as metro-e. I know I'm paying more for the hdw.) 

Question: 
** I have to terminate this on _something_. Something that has some
ability to buffer. Ideally not too big physically. Will play nice with
my 6500s (all sup720/3B).
- ASR1k - ouch. 
- 7204VXR, NPE 1G/2G - can the PCI bus handle an OC12 interface? 
- 6500/flexwan/PA-OC12 - heading to EOL?
- 6500/SIP-400/SPA - ouch

** can I actually do this (aggregate N OC-x as POS into one path)
without having to do something really painful like MPPP? 

** or is my buffering capability going to be no better than the
micro-burst-policing that you can achieve with QoS on a 6500?

Thanks,
-baocn