Problems getting Cisco router and Motorola Nextlevel system to work together

Tue Jul 24 15:23:40 UTC 2007

I am having some difficulties involving using a Cisco 7200 router to terminate 
ATM sessions from a motorola nextlevel IPTV system.  

  The router is currently configured to use IRB which is a hybrid process.  
The problems is that the IRB process is overloaded and is dropping traffic 
faster than it can process it.  I opened a case with Cisco TAC, and they 
recommended using RBE instead of IRB.  

  While I have been trying to plan migrating the system to RBE I discovered 
that Motorola uses a concept called "dynamic pvc's" to assign the pvc's to 
the CPE devices (a IPTV unit that has a data port).  The device uses two 
PVC's one for data and one for IPTV.  The system dynamically assigns the PVCs 
when the CPE devices connects.  This looks like it would not work with RBE, 
since the pvc can change before the dhcp lease expires.  

  Having this router dropping traffic, has been causing severe problems for 
end users and is causing an ongoing system outage.  I am currently trying to 
work with both Motorola and Cisco, however both vendors are blaming the 
problem on the other vendor.

  I am not sure what to do.  Motorola says their system only works with IRB 
and Cisco says the router will not function with this size network using IRB.  
Has anyone else arrived at a working solution using a Cisco 7200 router to 
terminate a Motorola nextlevel system support approximately 2000-3000 end 
users.

  I would be extremely gratefull if anyone who has worked with this type of 
system could help shed some light on this problem.  Thank you in advance.

-- 
Brian Raaen
Network Engineer
braaen (at) zcorum (dot) com