[j-nsp] Image compatibility

[Hyunseog Ryu]

The reason why Cisco 7600 series router image is so large is because it 
contains all FPCGA firmware images for line card, and during the boot, 
it checks hardware firmware version, and if it's not compatable with 
current IOS version, it will automatically download the FPCGA firmware 
to line card.
So sometimes it may take up to 15~20 min for booting because of this 
activity.




Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
> 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.
>
>