Howard, It would be so much fun to not understand some of this up close. :-)
>>> "Howard C. Berkowitz" 02/18/03 06:42AM >>> [snip] Does that make a 7500 with VIPs a L3 switch? A 12000 with distributed forwarding processors? Substituting router for L3 switch is a good idea, but go farther than that. You can think of a high-performance router as a small hidden network, containing one or more (think high availability) path determination "routing" processors/hosts that download FIB information to multiple forwarding processors/hosts. One public and vendor-independent discussion of this architecture continues in the IETF FORCES Working Group (go to www.ietf.org and navigate to Working Groups). > >What does this mean to us? Not much other than for capacity planning. >IMHO, an L3 switch has a longer life than a router. Not really, as you say in your next paragraph. I could go off into the ozone and say all high-speed routers are L3 switches. Indeed, ASICs aren't a necessity. I've worked on research router designs that used RISC processors in each forwarding and path determination engine, which gave lots of power but much more flexibility than ASICs. Admittedly, at least one of these was a specifically designed processor, but it definitely was software loadable and ran a real time OS. ASIC gets blurry anyway, when you start getting into the pure hard-etched IC, field-programmable gate arrays, electrically alterable field-programmable gate arrays, microcode sequencers, etc. [snip] Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=63323&t=63147 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
