Internet Edge Router replacement - IPv6 route table sizeconsiderations

Thu Mar 10 03:00:57 UTC 2011

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Woodfield [mailto:rekoil at semihuman.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2011 6:11 PM
> To: Chris Enger
> Cc: 'jgoodwin at studio442.com.au'; 'nanog at nanog.org'
> Subject: Re: Internet Edge Router replacement - IPv6 route table
> sizeconsiderations
> 
> I think this is the point where I get a shovel, a bullwhip and head
> over to the horse graveyard that is CAM optimization...
> 
> -C
> 

Well, it really isn't so bad.  With Brocade FPGA gear you can change how
much CAM is allocated to different functions (but you can't do it on the
fly, it takes a reboot).  I don't think these are available for the CER
series, though.  The MLX or MXR can be reconfigured.  The thing is that
the XMR and MLX are not ASIC-based devices, they are FPGA-based which
means the hardware can be re-wired with a code change.  Personally, I
like to be able to reallocate CAM from features I am not using to
features that I am using.

And to be fair, Brocade has been improving over the past couple of
years.  Now if only we could route layer 3 on MCT VLANS ...
(MCT is sort of like Arista mLAG but it is layer2 only at this point).