The Gorgon's Knot. Was: Re: Verio Peering Question

Dave Siegel dave at siegelie.com
Mon Oct 1 20:25:19 UTC 2001


On Mon, Oct 01, 2001 at 12:29:43PM -0700, Vadim Antonov reportedly typed:
> 
> 
> The original 7000s (with SP if anyone remebers that beast) were slower
> even that AGS/+ ...

yes, and I remember begging for SSE upgrades.  I also remember paging 
MFS Datanet techs to reboot Net99's routers at least once, maybe twice
a week to reboot our router because of route-flap meltdowns at the MAE's.

> 7000s are probably the worst-designed piece of hardware from Cisco.  The
> only benefit of replacing AGS/+ es at the time 7000 was introduced was
> that some smarthead designed AGS/+ w/o enough address leads, so they
> topped at 16Mb of RAM.

And when the 7500 was first introduced in '95, the RSP1 and no VIPs
it actually performed worse than the 7000.  The 7500's that may be
deployed today are nothing like the ones we had 5-6 years ago.  Not only
are we in our 4th generation of RSP, but we're in our 3rd (plus
intermediate upgrades) of VIP.  Even your bus might be different now (Czbus).

We were facing a real, live, brick wall back then.  We weren't fighting
for long-term scalability, it was short-term survivability.  That's a pretty
serious contrast with todays environment.

> PS   Longevity-speaking - it is not technology which really matters, it is
>      architecture.  You can buy a box now which you can still be using 10
>      years later, given the exponential traffic growth.  Won't cost you
>      arm and leg, too.

Indeed, we may still be deploying 7500's at the edge in 5 years, but I doubt
anyone will really want to...and I suspect Cisco will EOL long before then.

And, there may be a possibility that the high-end Cisco and Juniper gear
that many of us use today may be useful at the edge in 10 years, but I kinda 
doubt that.

That leaves multi-chassis solutions, which aren't *quite* ready to
deploy, but are getting closer every month.  That architecture certainly
has long-term potential.

Is that what you're alluding do, or something different?

In all of these cases, the technology *absolutely* does matter.  Technology
drives architecture.  Architecture may resolve technology issues, or
technology may make new architectures available that weren't possible before.

Dave

> 
> On Mon, 1 Oct 2001, Daniel Golding wrote:
> 
> > 
> > There is also a point that many folks may be missing. The 7200 and 7500
> > routers, while ubiquitious, are not new models. These are 5 year-old
> > devices, which have been progressively retrofitted with new CPUs, and are
> > based on even older technology.
> > 
> > There have been assertions made that telco equipment is expected to last for
> > 20 years - this is true. However, we are at a much later stage in the
> > maturity of voice phone switches. It will take a few more (albeit costly)
> > cycles of equipment replacement for routers to last anywhere near that long.
> > However, for computing equipment, the 7xxx class of routers has aged quite
> > well. How many of us are running with 5 year-old PCs on our desks? Now,
> > contrast this to how many of us have 7200s or 7500s in our networks...
> > 
> > - Dan

-- 
Dave Siegel
HOME   520-877-2593   dave at siegelie dot com
WORK   520-877-2628   dsiegel at gblx dot net
                      Director, IP Engineering, Global Crossing



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