[AusNOG] Cisco 6500 with Sup 720 3BXL - Good routing platform ??

[Dobbins, Roland]

On Sep 20, 2010, at 11:16 AM, Jason Bailey wrote:

> However here in Australia ISPs have successfully used them for Netflow based billing for years.

I doubt that very seriously.  sh mls netflow table-contention will likely show a different side of things.

Also note that the NetFlow they generate isn't useful from a security perspective due to the limited mls table size, lack of packet-based sampling for control of flow generation (i.e., sampled NetFlow), lack of a logical OR of all TCP flags seen within a flow, and lack of accounting for dropped traffic.

> An outright "not up to snuff for production use" isn't accurate. They 
> route/switch packets/frames perfectly well.

I content that 6500/7600 with current hardware isn't a useful edge platform on any network of any size due to its NetFlow issues, uRPF issues, and ACL construction issues.  Many years of experience in dealing with countless problems caused by these deficiencies, both hands-on in networks for which I was responsible as well as working with SPs making use of these platforms in their own networks, have led me to this conclusion.

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Roland Dobbins <rdobbins at arbor.net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>

 	       Sell your computer and buy a guitar.