router lifetime

Mon Oct 4 14:25:03 UTC 2010

On Mon, 4 Oct 2010, Curtis Maurand wrote:

> On 10/2/2010 7:23 PM, Franck Martin wrote:
>> How long do you keep a router in production?
>> 
>> What is your cycle for replacement of equipment?
>> 
>> For a PC, you usually depreciate it over 3 years, and can make it last 5 
>> years, but then you are stretching the functionality, especially if you 
>> upgrade the OS, tho it is not uncommon to see companies still on XP and 
>> IE6.
> Hell, we still have Windows 2000 and IE6.

People tend to want/expect faster graphics performance, faster CPUs, more 
RAM for bigger (or more bloated) applications.

A router handling T1 aggregation (i.e. cisco 7206, PA-MC-T3, M13 mux) 10 
years ago will still handle T1 aggregation today (assuming you still have 
T1 customers).  Over that time period, the only major change is that with 
routing table growth, routers that were able to handle full routes no 
longer can...so you either have to upgrade the NPE board to one that can 
hold 512MB or more or give up full routes.  And with the widebank28 muxes, 
you just have to replace the mux controller cards every few years as they 
tend to burn out.

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  Jon Lewis, MCP :)           |  I route
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