[f-nsp] NetIron MLX Experience..

[Tom Samplonius]

On Tue, 8 Aug 2006, Gunther Stammwitz wrote:

>
>> If you're familiar with Cisco 6500/7600 boxes, the MLX is to
>> the SUP720-3B as the XMR is to the SUP720-3BXL (except on the
>> Foundrys there is no PFC, and every card has an integrated
>> DFC which isn't upgradable :P). That means roughly 256k v4
>> routes on the MLX, and 1M v4 routes on the XMR, give or take
>> depending on what other things you try to do with the boxes
>> (v6, mpls, etc).
>>
>
> I don't agree.
>
> The MLX can handle up to 512K IPV4 Routes in hardware (=the FIB) and the
> total size of possible BGP4 IPV4-routes in the RIB is 2 millions. This means
> you can have up to four full views with 512k routes each.
>
> The foundry box is much more powerful than the Cisco gear you mentioned and
> cannot be compared since forwarding is done in hardware on the line cards
> and not via software like the 7600 does.

   I can't comment on the rest of this comment, but I know the Cisco 7600 can do 
hardware forwarding.  If Distributed Forwarding (daughter) Cards (DFC) are 
installed on the line cards, the line cards can do their own forwarding.  And 
the supervisor can do hardware forwarding, for any line cards without DFC though 
you are limited by how many pps it can do.  There are so many Supervisor 
variants though, so this might be hard to see on the Cisco website.

   I think Cisco has overly differientiated the Cisco 6500 series.  Calling some 
of the chassis' 6500s, by a different model series (7600) was the first mistake.

>
> Below is a comparison between the different foundry boxes one can buy:
>
> Attributes	BigIron RX	NetIron MLX	NetIron XMR
> IPv4 HW Routes	512K	512K	1M
> IPv4 BGP Routes	1M/4M	2M	4M
> BGP Peers	128	256	500
> L3 VPN Instances	N/A	400	2K
> VLL/VPLS Instances	N/A	4K	16K
> Outbound ACL	N/A	Yes	Yes
> MAC Addresses	16K	1M	2M
>
> Gunther


Tom