[c-nsp] Cisco 4000 series (4461) as a BGP router?

[Gert Doering]

Hi,

On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 05:06:47PM +0200, Mark Tinka wrote:
> On 28/Oct/19 16:54, Gert Doering wrote:
> 
> > But this should not be an excuse for a vendor not publishing basic
> > things like "the forwarding hardware on <this generation foo> can 
> > handle 4.13 trillion IPv4 entries, unless you use IPv6, in which case
> > it goes down to only 22.000".
> 
> I don't disagree, but while Patrick will find RIB/FIB performance
> numbers fairly basic and expected, so will someone else about pps, as
> will someone else about fan speed, as will another about rack depth, and
> someone else about NEBS, and another about port density, and another
> about licenses, and another about power, and another about block
> diagrams, and and and...
> 
> You see where I am going with this.

I do, and all these are easy to document for the vendor.  Get it right
once, follow the process for every new piece of hardware you bring to
market, win for everyone.  There is even cost savings for the vendor
not having to answer the same question from 500 possibly interested 
customers...   (now, fan speed might not be *that* interesting, but
"noise level" certainly is).

> I always take web site information as an overview. If my interest is
> piqued and there isn't enough data online for me to reach a conclusion,
> I reach out to the vendor.
> 
> Recently, I spent about 5 e-mails getting Cisco to confirm to me that
> their new 9300 Catalyst Ethernet switches actually do support
> egress/ingress policing. Even if their web site did (ambiguously) state
> this, historically, Ethernet switches have usually only done ingress
> policing and egress shaping, hence my ardent concern.

Specific hardware<=>feature combinations are certainly something that
need to be clarified individually.

Basic stuff (like "will it do BGP with a full table, will it handle
my throughput rate") shouldn't.

Actually Cisco is fairly good at documenting this (including rack depth,
weight, etc.), though half the answers for XR are hidden in supportforum
posts by Xander...

gert


-- 
"If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you 
 feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted 
 it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor."
                             Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Gert Doering - Munich, Germany                             gert at greenie.muc.de
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