[j-nsp] EX4600 Vs QFX 5100 VS ACX 5048

[Phil Mayers]

On 10/05/16 21:47, Aaron wrote:
> I have been curious about the cisco catalyst 6800 line… seems that the 6840 might fit this realm of smaller mpls pe… not sure of price…

The Cat6k including 6840 can certainly do a fair number of MPLS 
features, we use their older brother (6880, sup2T) and for a little 
while longer predecessor (sup720) as MPLS PE in L3VPN (inc. 6vPE), MVPN 
and some small amount of L2VPN (mainly EoMPLS)

IIUC the layer2 and MVPN stuff is lagging the state of the art quite a 
bit on that software train, which might be an issue for you.

The per-port cost will be relatively high compared to a merchant 
silicon-based device, but the features tend to be a bit better. Port 
density is also kind of low on the cat6k sadly.

They also run plain old IOS, with it's paucity of modern comforts (like 
any form of API, or transactional commits, etc.). Slightly weedy CPU, 
especially if you use Netflow on them (do not get me started...)