[c-nsp] ASR-100x intro

[Jon Lewis]

On Sat, 5 Jan 2013, Charles Sprickman wrote:

> We're tentatively shopping around, and I'm looking for that sort of 
> information on the ASR lineup.  The 1002 and 1002-X look very 
> interesting on paper, but I'm not finding much about what folks in a 
> small service provider role have to say about them.  We're at the point 
> where everything is ethernet now, so our 7206 with an NPE-G2 is feeling 
> pretty silly.  Some of the ASR stuff seems to be in the used channel 
> already, which is nice (I'd rather have two used than one new, FWIW).

For an ethernet-only operation, the 6500/sup720-3bxl delivers considerable 
packet forwarding/$ (lots of parts in the used channel).  Its biggest 
weaknesses would likely be netflow (having to do sampled if you're doing 
hundreds of mbit/s or more) and the question of what cisco chooses to do 
hardware-wise with tcam on future supervisors.  The 3bxl is limited to 1M 
ipv4 routes or (N ipv4 + (1M-N)/2 ipv6) N<1000000 routes.  Even the 
Sup2T-XL hasn't increased this limitation.  If they choose not to address 
this in the next couple of years, the 6500 will become unsuitable for use 
where full BGP routing is necessary.  They might choose to do this to 
force orgs using the 6500 as routers to buy ASRs (or Juniper gear)...or 
maybe the next Sup will support a few million FIB TCAM slots.

L3 Forwarding Resources
              FIB TCAM usage:                     Total        Used       %Used
                   72 bits (IPv4, MPLS, EoM)     622592      434995         70%
                  144 bits (IP mcast, IPv6)      212992       11744          6%

I may have to adjust the ipv4/ipv6 split [again] (which unfortunately 
requires a reboot), to squeeze a little more IPv4 capacity out of it 
assuming v6 growth continues slowly.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Jon Lewis, MCP :)           |  I route
  Senior Network Engineer     |  therefore you are
  Atlantic Net                |
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