[j-nsp] Image compatibility

[Richard A Steenbergen]

On Thu, Aug 02, 2007 at 06:09:06PM -0500, Hyunseog Ryu wrote:
> I think IOS for Cisco 7600 router is about that size already. :-)

110MB for current advipservices, and growing.

-rw-r--r--  1 code  code  110884868 Jun  4 18:05 c7600s72033-advipservicesk9-mz.122-33.SRB1.bin

They actually suffer from the exact same problem. If you crack open the 
IOS image you'll see that the majority of size is actually speciality hw 
images (SIP/SPA, OSM, etc) and the like that most people don't use (and 
could easily install a second image for if they did). With Cisco the 
situation is much worse though, it actually has to read that entire image 
from flash with every boot (at the blistering speed of 1MB/s from ATA), 
then unzip it (yes it actually uses zip :P), then TFTP the subimages to 
MSFC and cards and boot them. If you ever wondered why it takes 5+ minutes 
to boot a 6500, a good 3 minutes of it is wasted on preparation due to 
poor image management... Of course these are the same people who have been 
shipping SUP720s for years with internal flash drives which are too small 
to hold any even slightly moderm images, then charging an extra $2k for a 
$20 commodity compact flash with a Cisco label on it. :)

So yeah, Juniper is certainly better about the entire thing than Cisco in 
pretty much all respects, but thats hardly saying much.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)