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

[Sam Silvester]

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 2:36 AM, Bill Walker <bill at wjw.co.nz> wrote:
> Correct, but if you have two upstreams and a full international from
> each.....
>

It's important to understand the difference between the RIB (sits in
RAM on the Sup) and the FIB (the TCAM/hardware forwarding bit). If you
have two upstreams both with full routes, you still only end up with
~440k entries in the FIB.

Regarding the OP:

If you are going to look at the 6500/7600 though, look to the Sup2T
and forget the Sup720.

If you are interested in high density 10GE, look at the ASR9000. ASR1k
doesn't fit the bill in terms of throughput and can also be expensive
if you want lots of 10GE ports.

I can't comment on the Juniper or Brocade options, but the ASR9k is a
very nice box, doesn't use 'classic' IOS though so the config style is
different (better, in my opinion). Just make sure you get a chance to
trial it as there have been a range of bugs in BGP that range from
'harmless yet irritating' and 'this makes a simple task an out of
hours change' through to 'route policy breaks post-upgrade'. I'm
hoping hard that they get this addressed as it really takes the shine
off a damn good box otherwise.