[c-nsp] Cisco ME3800X/ME3600X - Any experiences worth sharing?

[Mark Tinka]

On Thursday, January 26, 2012 07:24:21 PM Nick Hilliard 
wrote:

> There are several important features which are still not
> there, including ipv6 (broken), RSPAN (unimpl), policy
> routing (unimpl), ASN32 support (unimpl), unicast RPF
> (unimpl), QoS (problems with egress policing).

That pretty much sums up the key issues we're facing too.

If you're not doing egress IPv4 ACL's on a dual-stacked 
interface, then IPv6 will work sufficiently for you. Even 
IS-IS supports IPv6 with MT, which is awesome.

The lack of uRPF is glaring, but you'll likely get that for 
v4 before it comes out for v6. 

Egress policing is poorly supported today. As of now, you 
can only do egress policing for queues that are being 
scheduled as LLQ. In earlier code, it's not even there; a 
shaper would be your only option.

I felt 32-bit ASN support is too far out, given many new 
ISP's or customers are being allocated 32-bit ASN's from the 
RIR's today.

> Having said that, the metro ethernet functionality looks
> awesome, and the hardware itself is very juicy
> (reasonably large buffers, or enormous on the me3800x),

Yes!

These are really great boxes for Metro-E solutions, whether 
you're extending MPLS into the Access like we are, or not. 
The EVC infrastructure is well written, and while some 
things could be polished, newer code brings new features and 
fixes for old bugs in this area.

> and development is progressing extremely quickly on the
> system, both in terms of fixing existing problems and
> adding new features.

Agree.

It's certainly worth the investment. Do not be put off by 
anyone saying the box isn't ready. That's just code, which 
can be fixed. We took the risk and have no regrets.

As Nick says, talk to your SE for a feature road map, so you 
know where Cisco are going with the platform.

Mark.
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