[c-nsp] Devil's Advocate - Segment Routing, Why?

Fri Jun 19 13:05:50 UTC 2020

On 19/Jun/20 14:50, Tim Durack wrote:

> If y'all can deal with the BU, the Cat9k family is looking
> half-decent: MPLS PE/P, BGP L3VPN, BGP EVPN (VXLAN dataplane not MPLS)
> etc.
> UADP programmable pipeline ASIC, FIB ~200k, E-LLW, mandatory DNA
> license now covers software support...
>
> Of course you do have to deal with a BU that lives in a parallel
> universe (SDA, LISP, NEAT etc) - but the hardware is the right
> price-perf, and IOS-XE is tolerable.
>
> No large FIB today, but Cisco appears to be headed towards "Silicon
> One" for all of their platforms: RTC ASIC strapped over some HBM. The
> strategy is interesting: sell it as a chip, sell it whitebox, sell it
> fully packaged.
>
> YMMV

I'd like to hear what Gert thinks, though. I'm sure he has a special
place for the word "Catalyst" :-).

Oddly, if Silicon One is Cisco's future, that means IOS XE may be headed
for the guillotine, in which case investing any further into an IOS XE
platform could be dicey at best, egg-face at worst.

I could be wrong...

Mark.