Trying to select BGP router

rcarlos · ‎05-11-2009

Hi, my organization is currently peering statically with two ISPs, pushing at peaks up to 100Mbit combined but typically 20Mbit combined during office hours. We'd like to move to a full route table BGP session with each ISP for redundancy and are looking for an appropriate router. One our our ISP's engineers has suggested the 7206/NPE-G2, saying he considers that hardware the minimum router spec to handle BGP sessions with the full table.

We're hoping to spend a bit less $$, wondering if the 7301 would be a good fit given our throughput.

I'd appreciate any advice on this, thanks.

Roberto

paolo bevilacqua · ‎05-11-2009

You can consider the npe-g1 or even 400.

In most cases, you never need the full table, even when for redundancy.

Joseph W. Doherty · ‎05-11-2009

What router are you using now, and its CPU load?

Is the 20 to 100 Mbps total traffic through the router?

Ethernet, for wire speed and minimum size frames requires 1.488 Kpps. So 100 Mbps (total bandwidth) would require 148.8 Kpps. Minimally double that to allow processing for other services, etc., means you probably want a router with at least about 300 Kpps. The NPE-400, -G1, or -G2 should do, as might the 3825 and 3845. (If you're looking at the 7301, which uses the -G1, also look at the 7201, which uses the -G2.)

PS:

What advantage do you see with obtaining each ISP's full Internet BGP table? If you're looking to optimize performance, I believe default route with OER/PfR delivers better performance with possibly less CPU impact to the router.

Reference for router performance: http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/downloads/765/tools/quickreference/routerperformance.pdf

paolo bevilacqua · ‎05-11-2009

I had totally forgotten the 7x01. Funny as they started making them as I was still with the 7200 team :)

One of these is probably your best choice.

Danilo Dy · ‎05-12-2009

7201 is an ideal BGP router. If you really tight with a budget, you can get 3845 with 512MB RAM.

Don't forget that you need minimum 512MB RAM for a full BGP routing table.

rcarlos · ‎05-12-2009

Thanks to you all for these helpful replies. I like the spec on the 7201 and think I can justify it more and more as I collect these types of opinions. I'd hate to underspend on the problem.

I appreciate the pointer as well towards OEF/PfR. This will be my first BGP implementation and I wasn't aware of that potential solution. Are the IOS releases for certain hardware we're discussing here considered the most stable with regards to OEF/PfR?

Joseph W. Doherty · ‎05-12-2009

For OER, I believe, you need 12.3T or later. 12.4 should be well along for stability.

For PfR you need 12.4T, I wouldn't consider it as stable.