[c-nsp] Opinions about the next 6500/7600

[Mark Tinka]

On Saturday, February 05, 2011 11:03:37 am 
cisconsp at secureobscure.com wrote:

> What PCore platform should we bet the farm on in the
> future?
> 
> For one-gig P's the asr1k is an affordable platform,...

If you look at a box like the ASR1006 or ASR1013, even 
10Gbps connectivity could be feasible provided you're not 
oversubscribing the ESP. An ESP40 may not large enough for 
some deployments, but the platform lends itself well to 
expanding accordingly.

> but
> the issue we are running into is "how much longer will
> oc12 and gige be sufficient for our P devices?"
> Our Cisco tengig Pcore platforms right now are limited to
> the old guard of 65/76, but a cost/port calculation was
> way too high for the feature discrepancy with the new
> platforms such as the asr9k. The asr9k price is very
> steep, and using that kind of firepower for a pure P
> role of ospf+ldp+mpls+qos was massive overkill.

Not necessarily.

Talk to your friendly Cisco account team about getting 
reasonable deals on the ASR9000, it can be a great Core 
platform provided you don't need SONET/SDH.

If you think about it, there really isn't much choice for a 
large scale Core box from Cisco now. The XR12000 doesn't 
make sense with the pricing of the CRS, and the ASR9000 is 
just as good performance wise (although incremental line 
card costs are close to that of a CRS, i.e., affordable, if 
you talk to your friendly Cisco account team).

> We were provided with EFT documentation supporting a
> near-term release of NXOS that supported MPLS, and with
> almost half the tengig price-per-port of the asr9k, the
> nx7k popped up as a leader for future-proofed 10gig
> Pcore platform at the expense of Ethernet-only
> linecards, and trying to decide between a bird in the
> hand or two in the bush.

I probably wouldn't bet on having a Nexus 7000 running as a 
Core box. Even with dumb, fast cores, chances are it would 
be playing catch-up to more established platforms.

Looking at the market, in keeping with relatively low port 
costs, Core boxes that will make sense for us are the Cisco 
CRS and Juniper MX960. The CRS is a good option because it 
can talk SONET/SDH decently. But the MX960 is just as 
powerful, especially since, like you, our optical folk hand 
us Ethernet at the end of the day.

> I also wonder how are others currently aggregating PE's?

If in the same PoP, into a large Layer 2 switch, e.g., Cisco 
6509-E or Juniper EX8200.

If across a WAN, into the core routers.

If across a ring, well, among each other which eventually 
ends up at the core routers anyway.

Cheers,

Mark.
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