[c-nsp] NCS-5501 & 5502 Experiences?

[James Jun]

Is anybody rolling NCS 5501 or 5502 in production yet with the current IOXR 6.1 build?

We're evaluating deploying NCS 5501 and 5502 (the -TR variants, not SE) for some MPLS LSR role.
If selected, the NCS55K would be used as pure 'P' router where all it does is label switching in
the middle, with ASR9K and MX boxes serving as PE's using 100GE into NCS55k.  We do not need L2VPN,
L3VPN or any PE services.

Our requirements are fairly simple, as noted below.  I've already run this through with our SE,
and he had confirmed that NCS5501 and 5502 should support them all, but I was wondering if anybody
had any experience using these boxes in production.


Requirements:
- MPLS Traffic Engineering (using OSPF-TE) and RSVP-TE
- Fast Reroute for RSVP-TE LSPs
- Bundle-Ether/LAG hashing - src/dst + ports, labels, for labeled traffic.
  Majority of labeled traffic expected to traverse through the NCS are typical IP/IMIX internet
  traffic, but labeled 1 time for PE-to-PE LSPs; IPv6 traffic would see two labels due to 6PE;
  There is also some limited pseudowire and vpn traffic so hashing on labels would be needed
  as well.  For the latter case regarding l2vpn, PEs will build l2circuits using FAT-PW.
- No need for large FIB, just decent LFIB to hold LSPs and FRR bypasses for typical metro size
  regional network.

- The port buffers on NCS5501 are deemed sufficient enough for 100GE->10GE stepdown on bursty
  internet use/IMIX traffic, but real life experiences/feedback would be nice to hear.

- We do not need to run BGP on these; out-of-band route-reflectors are used.


Many thanks in advance,

James