Film at 11:00

Fri Jan 3 14:12:44 UTC 1997

>
>      3'nd.. Do you mean VIP2 idea is worst then SSE idea?
>
>   The VIP2 is a fine idea.  However, it's again using conventional
>   microprocessor technology for forwarding.  And unfortunately, it needs to
>   be fairly high end processor technology to sustain the rates.  The problem
>   is that the traffic demand far exceeds the growth rate of processor
>   forwarding.
>
>   So the problem is that as we approach higher speed (post-7500) interfaces,
>   you're forced into more specialized hardware.  At this point, not having an
>   SSE ASIC becomes somewhat silly.  The rest of the board is ASICs, which in
>   volume end up cheaper than processors...
>
>   Tony
! Sorry, my crazy Win95 (I HATE MS!) drop me from TELNET 3 times when
! I did attempted to answer this from the home -:).
Really, there is one important question (not the blame about IOS's
memory or so on) - does hardware vendors (just as CISCO etc) really predicts
the future? When CISCO developed CS4500, they have decided 32MB RAM would be
enougph just as MIPS processor they established. Just now they (seems)
think it'll be enougph new MIPS and 128MB RAM. It's amazing but I can
easy upgrade my 1,000$ IBM PC up to 256MB RAM, but I can't do it for
my CISCO routers (about 10 - 30,000$) at all. It's easy to install
2 or 4 CPU into SUN ULTRA-2 or SGI SERVER computers, but it's impossible to do
it with routers. And so on.

What's about switching itself - I am not shure they (vendors) are on the wrong way.
Seems CISCO have well defined plan - they are moving toward from
1 CPU doing everything (CS2500 and CS4700) to (1 CPU for routing, few CPU for the
switching - VIP2) and to (1 CPU for the Routing, and many switches for the
switching - MPOATM, TAG Switching, etc) - they are trieing to build
mixed _routers + ATM_NETWORK_ backbone when routers would decide how to
forward some virtual streams (TCP connections etc) and switches would
forward the packets toward their destinations.

And this mean we'll have more troubles with the routers, not switches.
There is a lot of ways to increase switching capability (look on Stratocom,
for example); but the routers itself are far beyong. We can easyly increase
the CPU and Memory for the UNIX Servers; it's not difficult to build
server with 512MB RAM, 4x300 MHZ CPU, 10 PCI or SBUS cards; but
no one router can be expanded easyly. I wonder why it's so many discussion
there about DRAM/SRAM/etc..., there exist fast and nonblocking switches just
now; and moreover, you can install them in parallel because no one customer
need 200Mbit data links itself /this means you can use 4x100 mbit links
instead of 1x400Mbit withouth the lost of quality/. But what we'll  do with
the routers next 2 years? Just now existing CS7500 and CS4700 are 30% - 50% loaded
by ROUTING (not switching but routing) and there is not ways to
scale them easily.

Or we'll go back to the UNIX boxes + GATED? Sometimes I guess this is true _:)

--- 
Aleksei Roudnev, Network Operations Center, Relcom, Moscow
(+7 095) 194-19-95 (Network Operations Center Hot Line),(+7 095) 239-10-10, N 13729 (pager)
(+7 095) 196-72-12 (Support), (+7 095) 194-33-28 (Fax)