[c-nsp] Older Cisco Routers - which one to go with?

[Abello, Vinny]

I push 30Mb of traffic through an 1841 regularly... larger packets, just me downloading a file while acting as a firewall doing stateful inspection, IPS, a 4to6 tunnel, netflow, and nothing else major going on... It handles it with no problem (maybe 65% CPU load), so depending on what you're trying to do, 20Mb wouldn't be a problem for a 2801. If you're doing tons of smaller packets and lots of features, then it could topple over before it reaches 20Mb however. If you're looking for consistent performance and a switch would fit, I agree with Keegan. Use the Cisco router performance sheet as a reference. According to that, the 2801 should do up to 46Mbps of 64 byte packets (based on the rated 90k pps). Just measure it by worst case packet size (smaller being worse) multiplied by 90,000, multiplied by 8 to get your bps it can handle for your application... assuming the CPU is doing nothing else but forwarding packets.

http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/downloads/765/tools/quickreference/routerperformance.pdf

As far as I knew, all the ISR's are CPU forwarders. A used 7206VXR with NPE-anything will be faster... which is also bound by the CPU. Just take the number after NPE and multiply by 1000 and that's your pps. G1 and G2 are 1 and 2 million respectively. Based on that chart, the 2801 is a little over twice as fast as the 2651XM. Definitely not a hard rule of course, but I've observed you're usually dealing with hardware based forwarding when the pps is in the multitudes of millions. I'm certain there are exceptions to that though.

-Vinny

-----Original Message-----
From: cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net [mailto:cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Keegan Holley
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2011 3:10 PM
To: Graham Wooden
Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
Subject: Re: [c-nsp] Older Cisco Routers - which one to go with?

I wouldn't use the 2651 for much else than maybe a door-stop.  The 2801 might not be able to do 20M ethernet depending on what else you are asking it to do.  Can you use a switch here?  If it's all ethernet than a 3560 or even a 3550/3750 would be fine.  They even have 8 port 3560's for cheap.
 Also, I think the 2800 and 2600XM's were (mostly) hardware based.


On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 2:01 PM, Graham Wooden <graham at g-rock.net> wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> It's a toss-up between a 2651XM or a 2801 (because of budget 
> constraints), for a 20Mb Ethernet circuit that will do moderate QoS 
> and ACLs. No BGP, just static routes.
>
> The IOS's on both are relatively recent IP Services, and both have 
> their RAM maxed.
>
> I am leaning on using the 2801, but thought to throw this out there 
> and see any recommendations based on prior experience.
>
> What would you use between the two? Unfortunately, these are the only 
> two that I can go with, or I would have sealed this decision shut with 
> a 7200XVR w/ NPE-400 and call it done.
>
> Thanks,
>
>
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