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Bond 2+ DS-3s?

lawrencer
Level 1
Level 1

I know it's possible to bond T-1's, and most providers will bond up to 4 T-1's. Is it possible to bond 2 or more DS3s in the same fashion? Also, what type series router would I probably need to look at to handle this? 7200 series with a NPE-G1 or G2 controller?

Thanks in advance for any help.

--Bob

5 Replies 5

paolo bevilacqua
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Yes, it should be possible. However considering the high speed of the circuits, true "bonding" become much less important than for low speed circuits, and regular cef load balancing is good enough.

In all and any case a 7200 or higher class router is necessary.

Hope this helps, please rate post if it does!

Thanks for your help so far.

OK, so I'm looking at getting a 7204VXR. What type of NPE would I be better off with? Would a G1 maxed-out (1GB RAM, 256MB Flash) (since these are somewhat less expensive), or a default G2, or a maxed-out G2 be enough? We'll be doing a lot of VOIP and Internet traffic over this router. And of course, I want room to grow on for a few years.

We're looking at getting either 2 or more DS-3s, possibly an OC-3 (if we can get a decent price!), or a fiber-ethernet connection for our backbone.

Also, have their been issues regarding VOIP traffic with these routers? I've been told by another admin that they had issues with VOIP when they used a 7204vxr for their main router. But I can't find anything when I google anything regarding that.

And be honest on this one; don't just try to sell me something for more money. Do I need to look at something bigger, such as a 7300 series, or 6500 series? Also, what is the projected EOL of the 7200 series; I don't want to buy something that Cisco is about to drop this year or the next.

Sorry this is getting long, but I want to get as much info as possible.

Hi, since I left cisco, I try to sell much less than before :)

I think the G1 is a good balance of performance and cost. There are no issues with it no matter what your traffic is. You will need a bigger router when you have more interfaces, but that doesn't seem to be your case. Cisco ceases production of successful designs each 5 years or so, whatever you buy will be old someday, what matters is that it does the job today, when you need it.

Paolo,

When multilinking the DS3 ciruits,

Can you use the PA-2T3 module on the 7206 for the multilink interface, or does it need to be PA-MC-2T3+?

d.kerschbaum
Level 1
Level 1

Bonding T-1's via PPPMultilink is what i think your talking about and it works really good up to 16T-1's we have it in use now - you will likely need a G1 or G2 NPE on 7200VXR's if that traffic is voice with header compression.

As far as doing multilink on DS3 and higher - I've looked for this feature, but it doesn't seem to be supported on DS3 level interfaces.

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