GSR, 7600, Juniper M?, oh my!

Thu Jan 8 13:38:27 UTC 2004

If you choose the 7600's I would highly recommend going with the Sup720's 
the price difference is not that great and they incorporate the SFM which 
gives you the option of running dCEF on your WAN cards.

                            Scott C. McGrath

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004, Josh Fleishman wrote:

> 
> Back to the original question..
> 
> A lot of your decision comes down to what you're going to be doing with the
> box and when you expect your next jump from OC3 to OC12(or greater).  Also,
> you need to consider your comfort level with JUNOS vs IOS.  If you're cool
> with JUNOS then multiple M series boxes are worth investigating.  Our
> experience with them has been almost nothing but positive, plus they will
> allow you to expand to greater than OC3, providing you with some future
> proofing.
> 
> 7600's have proven to be fine boxes, especially if you have need for
> Ethernet port density at the same layer as your optical circuits.  A lot of
> feature support is going to depend on your supervisor/msfc selection.  If
> you go this route, and the coffers are full, check out the new(er) sup720's.
> However, based on your ACL and Policing requirements, the Sup2/MSFC2 combo
> should be sufficient.  Also, keeping in mind the emergence of point to point
> Ethernet solutions in the WAN/MAN (ie Metro Ethernet, and MPLS and L2TPv3
> pseudowires) keeping Ethernet at your edge might prove useful one day.
> 
> The GSR, IMHO, is a higher tier box based on both it's scalability to OC192
> and cost.  Since you're just going to OC3's now, I doubt the GSR will be
> your best bet for the cost, but then again I haven't priced one out lately.
> 
> If you're really pinching pennies, then check out upgrading your 7500's with
> RSP8/16s and faster VIPs.  But, if you're putting multiple OC3's on a box,
> then your down links will likely start turning to GE.  I'd stay away from
> the GEIPs if possible.  And for your 7200's, look into the NPG-G1 which have
> line rate GE ports onboard.  We've used them and they are pretty solid.  A
> head to head GRE bakeoff between the NPE-G1 and an RSP8(with dCEF) proved
> the NPE to be far superior.  
> 
> Josh
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On Behalf Of bcm
> Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 1:11 PM
> To: nanog at merit.edu
> Subject: GSR, 7600, Juniper M?, oh my!
> 
> 
> Hello all,
> 
>     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.
> 
>     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.
> 
>     I wanted to see what other operators in this situation have done, so I
> would appreciate anyone's input or insight into the pros and cons of these
> platforms or any other ideas as to how I can grow beyond the Cisco 7500.
> 