GSR, 7600, Juniper M?, oh my!

Richard A Steenbergen ras at e-gerbil.net
Wed Jan 7 02:05:00 UTC 2004


On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 08:25:18PM -0500, Alex Rubenstein wrote:
> 
> > 7500s? In 2004? Throw those things in the trash where they belong. It's
> > always amazing to me how many people will cling to obsolete things for
> > years just because it is what they know.
> >
> > Even a Juniper M5 will do 16 OC3's with line rate filtering and
> > forwarding. There are probably a dozen design considerations based on
> > requirements you haven't described, but if you're doing primarily sonet,
> > 7600 isn't really the way to go.
> 
> I usually agree with RAS, but not this time.
> 
> 7500's have a place; not everyone is looking for wire speed at 2499384
> gigglebits. In our network, 7500's have made a home for the leaf-ends of
> DS3's in dial and DSL pops, handling 20 to 40 megs/sec with easy (ie,
> vip2-50's at 15% CPU). Also handle MPLS AToM with ease, PPPOE/A if needed
> (we choose to segregate that onto VXR's).

Yes, I suppose 7500s do have a place. To quote rs, "I have a lace doily
and a lamp atop a 7500; it's quite nice." :)

Your argument applies if you have them sitting around already, don't need
performance, don't need filtering, don't need stability, AND have enough
places to put lamps or plants at your house, or places to sit at the colo. 
That's fine and all, we all have legacy gear we have to do something with, 
but the thought of someone considering building new pops of 7500s still 
sends chills down my spine.

Maybe I'm just biased because I actually do need all of the things
mentioned above, and I already have a very nice empty M160 chassis for a
chair at the colo, thus making the existance of a 7500 anywhere near me
more of a burden in trash disposal fees than anything else. If you 
really do have a situation where you don't need or want any of the 
aforementioned qualities, you can use Linksys for all I care. :)

> 7500's also can handle many ChDS3's with ease. And, also, with RSP16/VIP8,
> lots of traffic can be handled.
> 
> All at a substantially less price than even the cheapest used M5 you can
> find. 7507 + dual ps + rsp4 can be had for $1000 to $1500, and VIP2-50's
> can be had for $300. And then, you can use all the PA's you have laying
> around from your 7200's.

The cost of the extra rack space will be more than you paid for the entire
7500 every few months.

If I'm going to run many ChDS3, I'd rather go ahead and future-proof
myself (I could end up replacing those PICs with OC12 QPP's doing ds1's
some day) for a little bit more money now, still be able to run 20+ ChDS3
ports with plenty of uplink capacity in a 3U M10, and save the money in
the cost of the space and power.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)



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