[AusNOG] powerful routers in core/edge routing/switching

[Lincoln Dale]

hi Ankit,

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 3:41 AM, Ankit Agrawal <ankitagrawals at gmail.com>wrote:

> I do need to hold the full routing table for various reasons.
>

Ok. you're stuck buying expensive router ports then.  Reality is there's 3
or 4 vendors you can buy from.


> Also, I have had 6500 with full routing table and have seen what happens
> when routes converge so moved away from it…need a powerful router this time
> to hold few ten of gbps of traffic with capability to manipulate BGP routes
> if needed.
>

Historically cat6k has had an anemic CPU (lacking iron) paired to an OS
with cooperative CPU scheduling that has always done a ton of things
not-so-well.

More recent Supervisors at least didn't drop to software for forwarding -
or use first-packet-in-software / MLS switching hardware cache approach -
but they've always been just awful from a CPU perspective.

The 7600 re-badge was perhaps a step up because it at least had a more
capable CPU but on both 6500 & 7600 you often needed a secret-decoder-ring
to know what to do / not do in order to remain in the silicon forwarding
path.

Its not such a bad box provided you didn't find those corner cases.




> Still need a switch which is why Brocade seems to be a good option as you
> can convert the ports to be switches ports.
>

I've never consider Brocade to ever be a good option (my rose-coloured
glasses view). :)

To be honest, I'd keep 'switches' and 'routers' separate devices.  Hybrid
approaches seem to be full of compromises.


cheers,

lincoln.
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