[c-nsp] Devil's Advocate - Segment Routing, Why?

[steve ulrich]

> 
> On Jun 19, 2020, at 08:06, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka at seacom.mu> wrote:
> 
>> On 19/Jun/20 14:50, Tim Durack wrote:
>> 
>> If y'all can deal with the BU, the Cat9k family is looking
>> half-decent: MPLS PE/P, BGP L3VPN, BGP EVPN (VXLAN dataplane not MPLS)
>> etc.
>> UADP programmable pipeline ASIC, FIB ~200k, E-LLW, mandatory DNA
>> license now covers software support...
>> 
>> Of course you do have to deal with a BU that lives in a parallel
>> universe (SDA, LISP, NEAT etc) - but the hardware is the right
>> price-perf, and IOS-XE is tolerable.
>> 
>> No large FIB today, but Cisco appears to be headed towards "Silicon
>> One" for all of their platforms: RTC ASIC strapped over some HBM. The
>> strategy is interesting: sell it as a chip, sell it whitebox, sell it
>> fully packaged.
>> 
>> YMMV
> 
> I'd like to hear what Gert thinks, though. I'm sure he has a special
> place for the word "Catalyst" :-).
> 
> Oddly, if Silicon One is Cisco's future, that means IOS XE may be headed
> for the guillotine, in which case investing any further into an IOS XE
> platform could be dicey at best, egg-face at worst.
> 
> I could be wrong...

never underestimate the desire of product managers and engineering teams to have their own petri dishes to swim around in. 

-- 
steve ulrich (sulrich at botwerks.*)