[AusNOG] Equipment upgrade path

[paul hollanton]

Good morning list,

I hope you all have had a good weekend.

I’m returning to the ISP industry after a longer than expected stint in the
corporate space and was hoping to get some pointers on some infrastructure
upgrade options which I’m having to consider.



I work for a small-ish ISP that offers some (but not a lot) DSL/NBN
services and a bunch of  TLS such as Telstra’s Ethernet Access and AAPT
e-lan etc. with the odd mpls layer3 vpn too.



We’ve been using Cisco ASR1001 routers for L2TP (DSL/NBN) termination as
well as sub-interfaces for the TLS services with the headend trunks from
the suppliers terminated on a switch that’s providing a layer2 only
function.



Rather than upgrading and continuing to terminate all TLS services on the
ASR, I thinking of purchasing a layer 3 switch such as the Cisco Nexus
9236C or similar and terminating the TLS services on this as well as the
supplier trunks – the 100Gb port functionality should allow us to have the
device(s) in operation for some time before needing to upgrade.



The documentation on the units state that they support mpls and BGP which
is nice, but if anything too heavy is required for customers with special
requirements , perhaps we’d leave that to the ASR – which will also
continue to perform any L2TP and NAT requirements.  To be honest, none of
the documentation on the Cisco layer 3 switches suggest they are suited to
what I have in mind, which brings me to my main question...


Is whether the introduction of a layer3 switch for this function is a good
idea, or should we continue to use ASR’s for the job?  My other concern is
will the Nexus be able (or is suitable) to do the traffic shaping that is
required for the Telstra Ethernet Access services (which is important that
it’s done exactly right) and other QoS functions such as voice
prioritisation.



If there’s a better design or more suitable equipment I should consider,
please let me know.  I’d prefer to stay with Cisco as the vendor, primarily
as the migration path will (should) be simpler and I have reasonably good
experience with them over the years.



Thanks,

Paul

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