<apologies for length and soul-baring> > On 18/01/12 14:07, Nick Hilliard wrote: > > > > Gert, hardware upgrades need to happen; otherwise we would all be stuck > > using bus interfaces designed in the early 1990s. Nobody likes paying for > I tend to agree with this. Our sup720 have been really REALLY good > boxes, with exceptionally good lifetime.
echoed. The sup720 has flaws, sure. How old is the design? How much engineering went into creating the ASIC matrix? It's amazing to me that Cisco has managed to reprogram those same ASICs to add all of these features over the last near-decade. And resale value on a vs720 is still right up there. > > In fact, with the exception of a couple of features (IPv6 uRPF springs > to mind) and the low 10gig port density, they still compare favourably > with current-generation kit for certain workloads. On the other hand, if you compare it to an ASR9000, the port density is pretty damn good, and the throughput is incredible. Is it a router? No. But it sure as hell plays one on TV. Enough so that I can run an enterprise network completely without routers - my 6500 ring are the routers. Can an ASR9k do more? Sure. Can an ASR9k deterministically switch 100GB of traffic with 7-10us latency? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA (OK. If you do a tunnel-recirc or GRE encap, you need another pass and you add another 7-8 mics. Right. NAT appears to require a recirc as well, though it's not stated, as on the vs720 at least it adds another 7-8. Again. Please find me a router that can do that. One that I can pick up refurb from my friendly vendor for dirt cheap.) > I tend to think of them as the swiss army knife. You *could* buy a large > array of random different boxes from other vendors, but why bother? So I don't. It makes for an interesting network in a way, because I am taking 2-3 layers and collapsing them all into one switch - but I can because the 6500 lets me, and lets me do it so trivially easy. I've just implemented rosen-MVPN across the ring. It's cleaned up the network way more than before, with better isolation and security, and the configuration is even more understandable. Swiss army knife is right. They take some understanding and care and feeding but they are the jack-of-all-trades sitting right in the center of the line. It's taken too damn long, but I think Cisco has finally managed to position the product correctly vis Nexus and cat4k - it's an ultimate edge device that can also be a core. I love my 6500s. You'll pry 'em from my cold dead fingers. Unless someone really does show me something that can do what they do better. (my network is a little unusual, in that I have maybe 200-300 hosts strung across 10 locations with 10G interconnects and mostly low packet rates except for about 20 minutes each day when traffic rates go through the ceiling and only reliable answer available is massive sledgehammer overkill so cheap big iron is a savior. I tried the cheap provision-what-you-need route because the then-boss was a cheapskate. I spent a lot of time chasing errors caused by under-provisioned hardware and lots of small boxes. I gave up and forced in my first 6500s because we were losing money hand over fist on it and I was tired and I knew they worked from previous experience. I got lots of bitching on that one. Until the network problems all went away. Things have been dead stable for years now. Previous boss was fired for being a cheapskate over solving the problems. Now I run things. So I might be biased.) -bacon _______________________________________________ cisco-nsp mailing list cisco-nsp@puck.nether.net https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/