[c-nsp] Replacing a 7206VXR w/ NPE-G1 with Sup720-3BXL w/ WS-X6408A-GBIC

[Matthew.Coleman-Hamilton at servicebirmingham.co.uk]

This is just a quick note to thank everyone who responded to my post. It's 
the first time I've used this mailing list and I wasn't sure of what kind 
of response to expect (I've had mixed experiences of using the official 
Cisco Support forums) but the volume of detailed replies, advice and 
personal experiences has been incredibly helpful and much appreciated :o)



From:
Gert Doering <gert at greenie.muc.de>
To:
Matthew.Coleman-Hamilton at servicebirmingham.co.uk
Cc:
cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
Date:
29/06/2011 18:21
Subject:
Re: [c-nsp] Replacing a 7206VXR w/ NPE-G1 with Sup720-3BXL w/ 
WS-X6408A-GBIC



Hi,

On Wed, Jun 29, 2011 at 04:49:12PM +0100, 
Matthew.Coleman-Hamilton at servicebirmingham.co.uk wrote:
> Thanks. I had (perhaps foolishly) assumed that moving from an NPE-G1 to 
a 
> Sup720-3BXL-based platform would represent an upgrade from the 7206VXR 
(as 
> well as having the advantage of bringing our Internet BGP tier in-line 
> with the rest of our core network from a hardware perspective).
> 
> When comparing the NPE-G1 to a Sup720-3BXL for the purposes of being an 
> internet-facing BGP router am I actually proposing a backwards step?

The CPU on the Sup720 is slower, so "load a full BGP table from 5 peers"
will take longer.

OTOH, "100% CPU due to BGP" on the Sup720 doesn't impact packet forwarding
capacity, as that's done by other bits of the hardware - so depending on
traffic mix and BGP churn (and number of peers) the Sup720 will vastly
outperform the NPE-G1 :-)

As a reference: we're currently using Sup720s as peering and upstream
routers, and we've been quite happy most of the time.

Major causes for unhappiness: software bugs (can happen on all platforms),
hardware limitations (some things the hardware just cannot do), political
issues inside Cisco (6500/7600 in-fighting).

gert
-- 
USENET is *not* the non-clickable part of WWW!
 //www.muc.de/~gert/
Gert Doering - Munich, Germany gert at greenie.muc.de
fax: +49-89-35655025 gert at net.informatik.tu-muenchen.de
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