[c-nsp] Understanding 10G line card oversubscription

[Phil Mayers]

On 03/22/2011 01:03 AM, Tony Varriale wrote:

>> The Nexus 7K is working on the routing side of things but lacks
>> features (MPLS).

> I suspect that's coming very shortly. Which MPLS features are important
> to you?

I've heard "very shortly" from Cisco before. Frankly, they've got no 
belief credits with me. Unless and until I see it, it's vapour.

As for features - full parity with the feature set on 6500, so:

L3VPN including 6vPE
EoMPLS
FRR
Autotunnel

And although this isn't on 6500, on a newer platform I expect VPLS for 
good measure.

Now, the chipset inside the N7k may be capable of a bunch of wondrous 
things, but without the software it's just so much expensive fused sand. 
I find it *extraordinarily* hard to believe they'll reach MPLS feature 
parity with the (current) 6500 in any timescale less than 2 years.

Which is a shame, because a lot of the Nexus features look great; NX-OS 
certainly seems to have a better, newer structure and both the control 
and forwarding plane are a lot faster on the N7k.

I would love to be proven wrong. Maybe NX-OS is built in such a way as 
to permit speedy feature development. But unless and until it's 
shipping, and the bugs are ironed out...