GSR, 7600, Juniper M?, oh my!

Tue Jan 6 21:23:30 UTC 2004

>     I'm faced with a difficult decision.  I work for a large multi-node
> regional ISP (and Cisco shop).  In our largest nodes we've found the Cisco
> 7500 series routers to be at the end of their useful life due to the
> throughput generated by POS OC-3 feeds and 10,000+ broadband users whose
> traffic needs to be moved out of the node.  Short of building a farm of
> 7500's the need to upgrade seems clear.

Will the interfaces likely continue to be POS OC-3 ? What is the growing
path for this: POS OC-12, GigE ?

>     But where to go?  The Cisco GSR platform seems a logical choice, but
> their new 7600 series units are attractive for their cost.  Juniper may
also
> have a place at this end of the processing spectrum.  I'd also like to
> ensure that the new platform supports doing CAR and ACLs at line rate,
given
> the client base.

The GSR line-cards to what you want would need to be the "edge" ones, based
on either Engine 3 or Engine 4+.
7600 requires WAN cards to support POS, I think GSR and Juniper M are more
likely candidates for this design.

Rubens