HP HSR Routers

Sat Mar 12 19:30:09 UTC 2016

On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 1:04 PM, Colton Conor <colton.conor at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would suggest looking at the HP routing line, in North America for some
> reason people over look them (HP's ability to get the message out is not
> stellar). The HSR 6602-XG will push 15 Mpps with routing table sizes of
> 4mil (ipv4) and 2mil (ipv6) there is no additional licensing for any
> feature you want to use. With respect to implementation I have always felt
> if you understand the protocol who gives a damn about the syntax... The MSR
> 4060 will handle 36 Mpps with table sizes of 1mil (ipv4) and 1mil (ipv6).
> Either solution will be cost effective.

Hi Colton,

My bet is that there's no TCAM. That or they're being cagey about
their hardware architecture since I can't find a single document about
the router that even mentions TCAM. Instead I'd bet they're doing
software routing (radix tree) spread over "32 hardware threads" and as
long as the bulk of your destinations are in small enough parts of the
tree to fit cleanly in to the processor caches you'll get "up to 15
Mpps".

http://h20195.www2.hp.com/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c04111430&doctype=quickspecs&doclang=EN_US&searchquery=&cc=us&lc=en

If I'm right (I'm making guesses after all) then you should compare
HP's offering with software-based routers from other vendors rather
than comparing against routers which have a hardware fast path.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>