Difference between 6500 and 7600 routers.

bruce.porter · ‎11-19-2008

What is the difference between the 6513 and the 7613 boxes?

I have heard that Cisco is diverging the two models and positioning the 7613 for WAN but they look the same to me when I configure one, same supervisors, same line cards, same IOSs 12.2(33). No 12.3 or 12.4, which apparently were developed for ISPs, with more security features to thwart the attacks experianced there.

Is there a site somewhere that shows the differences, couldn't find one.

ropethic · ‎11-19-2008

6500 does not support following:

1. not all MPLS fetaures

2. RSP720

3. Optical service modules

other difference is 7600 slots vertical vs. horizontal for 6500.

Right now there is no commitment from the BU for future support.

It is true the 6500 has been targeted as enterprise switch with 7600 as enterprise wan

wan router.

basically comes down to MPLS features needed to deploy at PE and / or P routers

bruce.porter · ‎11-19-2008

Some more digging on the differences between the 6513 and the 7613:

The following link shows compares the features of the two routers:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/products_category_buyers_guide.html

Differences:

Look at the product data sheets for the 6500 and the 7600, side by side:

6500:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps5718/ps9336/product_data_sheet0900aecd806ed759_ps708_Products_Data_Sheet.html

7600:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/routers/ps368/product_data_sheet0900aecd8057f3b6.html

I purchased a 720 for one of my 6513s. It was a WS-SUP720-3B. It is shown on the product data sheet for the 6513 and it is not a VSS type blade. This blade is supported in both the 6513 and 7613. The 7613 also supports the RSP blade, which is the type number 720-3C and 720-3CXL.

The RSP blade uses the Power PC chip (RISC R7000) running at 1.2GHz, an interesting difference.

Aside from the processor difference, the feature comparison page shows that there is a new ASIC on the 7600. The two boards have identical capabilities in throughput and MPLS and VPN support in hardware.

Both models support up to OC48 blades.

It appears that they both support the same SSL service module.

Differences are thin. when you take out the R7000 RISC processor difference on the 720-3C blade, there don't appear to be any.

Bottom Line:

It appears that the 3BXL version of the 720 blade works in both 6513 and 7613 and it supports VSS. VSS is a new kind of HSRP where both links remain active. It doesn't appear that the 720-3CXL 7600 blade supports VSS. This would make it more targeted to an edge or WAN type of environment. It would have the better secured 12.3 and 12.4 IOSs in the future though, I think.

Joseph W. Doherty · ‎11-19-2008

Robert describes some features unique to the 7600, but there are also items unique to the 6500. For instance, I believe many service modules will only work in the 6500, VSS, sup32-PISA, etc. The later software images have also split between the two.

There is a lot of overlap. I suspect, that more or less, the two chassis are almost identical, but have been made different more for marketing positioning than for technical reasons.

I haven't seen a nice listing of hardware common or unique to both, but if you wade through the product pages you'll see cards listed for both and those listed only under one rather than the other.