[c-nsp] Replacement for 3550-12T being used as a router - IPv6 related

[Eric Van Tol]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Tinka [mailto:mtinka at globaltransit.net]
>
> Yes, no native v6 on Day One is a pain. But we knew this
> when the box was being developed. Cisco have continued to
> insist that basic v6 will become available at the end of
> 2011.
> This is fine with us. For the time being, we'll tunnel
> customers via 6-in-4 to our Aggregation routers. When
> ME3600X code comes out with native v6, we'll just move the
> customer's services off the Aggregation and on to the
> ME3600X, to live side-by-side with v4.

Yes, we will do pretty much the same thing.  It's what we're doing now for non-v6 enabled switches and seems to work.  Traffic load on v6 is low, so static tunnels to routers are not a big deal at the moment.

> Hmmh, we only started testing DSCP ingress marking after
> upgrading to 12.2(52)EY1. In this release, ingress DSCP
> marking works. The problem is we can't seem to have an
> ingress policer + any 'set' command at the same time. I'm
> pinging my SE on that to figure out if it's a code or
> hardware issue. I'm hoping for the former, lest someone is
> going to get it :-).

Looking back on my notes, it wasn't DSCP marking that was the issue.  It was classifying/remarking traffic based upon source IP address.  This was problematic because we needed to make sure that traffic from our customers was properly re-marked for our voice network.  We could really only do this based upon destination IP.  However, we've recently begun deploying low cost NIDs at customer locations that can ensure the proper markings for us, so we can now just classify based upon DSCP instead of IP.  I am told that classifying/remarking based upon IP is coming in Q2/Q3 this year.

> The ME3600X is a really solid platform. So far, it's working
> a lot more like a router than a switch. We like that! We
> like that very much!

Cool.  Any experience with the MPLS functionality?  We're going to go with these as a replacement for the ME3400s, as these are 10/100/1000 with a clear upgrade path to 10G.  Price is definitely not bad, either.  I don't have pricing on the MPLS upgrade yet, but the 10G upgrade seems quite reasonable.

-evt