[j-nsp] Cisco 7206 replacement

[Mark Tinka]

On Thursday, December 30, 2010 08:24:34 am Jonathan Towne 
wrote:

> We landed an RUS grant and spec'd 2*ASR1k into that
> funding, then managed to land a second RUS grant in the
> second round.. found that the ASRs wouldn't have enough
> port density for how we wanted to lay things out.

The ASR1013 is also being positioned as a Carrier Ethernet 
aggregation platform. I guess it can work in this role for 
relatively small deployments, but for some serious business, 
the MX-series or ASR9000 is still the winner, I think.

> Our goals in replacing the 7206 were fairly simple:
> We wanted redundancy beyond 2 PSUs, and the ability to do
> online OS upgrades,...

I'm not sure whether you mean ISSU - we haven't yet done 
this on our end, since ISSU has been a little fragile (don't 
know the story of late).

Although it's painful (time-wise), IETF Graceful Restart + 
an upgrade of each RE is what we've been doing happily.

> Here, too, the MX480 is probably massively overkill: but
> this was our chance to get the right gear to grow with,
> so here we are.

I always say that if you can get kit at a good price, 
regardless of how large or small it is, and you're happy, 
don't be restricted by how the vendors are positioning us, 
provided you're happy.

The only thing to watch out for are incremental costs, e.g., 
new line cards, e.t.c. But if you can fill up the initial 
number of ports sufficiently, then expansion justifies 
itself.

> We also got a LOT of life out of our 7206, and expect no
> less from this MX480, as our budget might not allow us
> to buy anything comparable for some time.  We're adding
> many thousands of GPON customers, both in the
> residential and business market, so the added capacity
> was necessary.

The MX is great for GPON aggregation.

> I can't speak for a 1:1 replacement of the 7206VXR, but
> if its working correctly and within its limits, and you
> don't plan to grow the network, maybe it doesn't need
> replacement: maybe a spare chassis, engine, and some
> PA's would be enough.  Not so, in our case.

I guess that means the NPE-G2 didn't tickle your fancy :-)?

> I should be taking delivery of it mid-january, and you
> can all look forward to many dumb questions thereafter!

Welcome to the club :-).

Cheers,

Mark.
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