[c-nsp] Cisco 7304-NSE-100 used as a border BGP router

[Saku Ytti]

On (2011-10-04 23:21 -0700), puck-nsp at interworld.net wrote:

> I have a customer who wishes to be multi-homed with us and another Service Provider  and wishes to have 2 full views.  We proposed a Cisco 7206VXR-NPE-G1 with 1Gb/256 and the other vendor (a small ISP) provided him with a 7304-NSE-100 and a SPA2-1Gb card as a solution.  He has 1Gb with 100Mb commit Metro-E from both providers.  Surprisingly, I had never seen a 7304 before used for anything but MPLS tunnel termination. When I looked it up on the Cisco router performance chart is shows the NSE-100 about 3 times the performance of the NPE-G1 but uses PXF instead of just plain old CEF.  

3.5Mpps is for single pass, quite many things force two pass and halve
performance. The platform is at its best at relatively basic IP termination
with QoS, there when compared to VXR it offers superior and predictable
performance when VXR and QoS typically at any non-trivial scale spell problems.

> 1.	 What is PXF in comparison to normal CEF?

PXF is NPU, i.e. application specific hardware, so it has better performance of
CPU. CEF means just FIB in cisco speak, but in this context you intend it to
mean any software processing.


> 2.	Will this router be able to route 500Mb/sec while processing BGP tables?

Yes. But it won't eat full BGP table.

> 3.	Is there something special about this 7304 that I am missing?

It's dead platform, as is VXR soon. I wouldn't deploy them, having said that,
if someone wants to buy them, I'm happy to sell :>. 

> 4.	Is the 7304 ok with IPv6 and IPv6 BGP?

Yeah it does IPv6 in hardware.

> 5.	Is this a good choice for a customer router?

No, it's not particularly good choice anywhere anymore.

-- 
  ++ytti