>Switching + VLANS != MPLS
Yes. Do you need this on every tower? You may want to aggregate smaller sites with switches and put the CCRs at central towers. You might switch backhauls and put a router to the switch to do MPLS over the switched segment. We do MPLS in order to use VPLS tunnels. But for packet forwarding a HW-Switch is more capable than a SW MPLS implementation. (Depends on the switch. These Atheros Switches in Routerboards are SOHO-Switches). >Depends on the load at hte site, but an RB1100AHx2 can put up a pretty good >fight, otherwise, yes, to CCRs you go. RB1100AHx2 is a good router. But it has to encapsulate/decapsulate MPLS Packets in SW. >Little need to guess, their web site tells you exactly what it does under a >few different circumstances. Three different packet sizes, three different >configurations for both bridging and routing. Yes. You’ll get this throughputs but it will start to chunk earlier. As this are maximum values with nice traffic pattern and no OSPF process jumping in and eat some cpu. With a HW-Switch I am sure to forward at non blocking wirespeed. >Also, though, on smaller than CCR routers, you have to deal with switch chip >aggregation issues. CCR1009 is a nice little box, though. As we use switches to power the gear anyway (It gives very clean installations) it is a surplus to add a MPLS-Router to a site.
