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Advice on choosing a router for internet bgp

dan_track
Level 1
Level 1

Hi,

I'd like some advice on choosing a router for our 100Mb internet connection. I'm going to have two routers one to ISP1 and the other to ISP2. Both will allow for full bgp peering. Can you please help me to decide a router. What questions and features shoudl I be looking out for.

Additionally these routers should they sit in front or behind my Cisco ASA firewalls?

Thanks

Dan

2 Accepted Solutions

Accepted Solutions

Giuseppe Larosa
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Hello Dan,

you need routers with enough cpu power  and memory to handle a full BGP table that nowdays is in the order of more then 300,000 routes.

You should go for C7200 VXR with NPE-G2 or C3845 with 512 MB (adding all the possible memory chips).

I recommend the first, other colleagues have reported to have used C3845.

you may evaluate also ASR 1000 series

Usually border routers are placed on the outside of firewalls

Hope to help

Giuseppe

View solution in original post

Jon Marshall
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

dan_track wrote:

Hi,

I'd like some advice on choosing a router for our 100Mb internet connection. I'm going to have two routers one to ISP1 and the other to ISP2. Both will allow for full bgp peering. Can you please help me to decide a router. What questions and features shoudl I be looking out for.

Additionally these routers should they sit in front or behind my Cisco ASA firewalls?

Thanks

Dan

Dan

I agree with Giuseppe, a 7206vxr with NPE-G2 would be a safe choice for what you want.

As for location, well they pretty much have to be on the outside of the ASA firewalls otherwise you may face problems such as BGP peering through the firewalls. You can do it but it's not recommended. Internet connectivity should always be terminated so that the traffic has then to go through the firewalls.

Jon

View solution in original post

9 Replies 9

Giuseppe Larosa
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Hello Dan,

you need routers with enough cpu power  and memory to handle a full BGP table that nowdays is in the order of more then 300,000 routes.

You should go for C7200 VXR with NPE-G2 or C3845 with 512 MB (adding all the possible memory chips).

I recommend the first, other colleagues have reported to have used C3845.

you may evaluate also ASR 1000 series

Usually border routers are placed on the outside of firewalls

Hope to help

Giuseppe

Many thanks for that. I'll go down the 7200 route. Can the 7200 take fiber with LC handoff?

Thanks

Dan

Hello Dan,

yes GE ports on NPE-G1 or NPE-G2 can use the fiber SFP but you need to specify it using media type command

conf t

int gi0/x

media-type sfp

router(config-if)#media-type ?
  rj45  Use RJ45 connector
  sfp   Use SFP connector

Hope to help

Giuseppe

Jon Marshall
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

dan_track wrote:

Hi,

I'd like some advice on choosing a router for our 100Mb internet connection. I'm going to have two routers one to ISP1 and the other to ISP2. Both will allow for full bgp peering. Can you please help me to decide a router. What questions and features shoudl I be looking out for.

Additionally these routers should they sit in front or behind my Cisco ASA firewalls?

Thanks

Dan

Dan

I agree with Giuseppe, a 7206vxr with NPE-G2 would be a safe choice for what you want.

As for location, well they pretty much have to be on the outside of the ASA firewalls otherwise you may face problems such as BGP peering through the firewalls. You can do it but it's not recommended. Internet connectivity should always be terminated so that the traffic has then to go through the firewalls.

Jon

Jon Marshall
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

Dan

Yes 7206vxr can handle fibre connections.

Jon

Hi,

I've been away for quite a long time, so have only read the post now. Thanks for your help so far, can the 7204 VXR with NPE-G2 also handle fibre connections i.e multi-mode/single-mode?

Also can the base configuration with NPE-G2 of either 7204 and 7206 handle two copper ethernet connections for data usage, not management, or do I need to purchase something else?

Also what is the difference between a 7204VXR NPE-G2 and a 7206VXR NPE-G2? is it just the slot number difference?

Thanks

Dan

Hello Dan,

the gigabit interfaces have a SFP slot where you can put a single mode or multimode SFP on a per port basis.

Remember the media-type command in interface config mode.

the main difference between the two chassis is the number of slots for Port Adapters.

If you have rack space you can take the C7206VXR that supports two power supplies that is a good reason to choice it.

I'm not sure C7204 supports two power supplies but the datasheet says yes.

We have many C7206VXR and some older C7206.

To be honest fast PAs consume the so called bandwidth points so not always the 6 slots can be populated.

However the 3GE on new processors like NPE-G2 should not count against BW points.

the two chassis are compared here in this datasheet:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/routers/ps341/data_sheet_c78_339749.html

Hope to help

Giuseppe

Thanks for that,

Few more questions:

1. Thanks, as I understand it the NPE-G2 comes with 3 GE/FE/E ports and 1 management copper port. How many copper ports are there and how many SFP ports are there? Can we use copper SFP’s in the SFP modules or does it only accept fibre SFP’s?

2. Is the 7204VXR suitable for the full bgp peering? I can't see much of difference between the 7206VXR and 7204 VXR with NPE-G2.

Thanks again,

Dan

hello Dan,

each GE comes with an RJ-45 plug and an SFP slot, use of copper doesn't require a SFP

don't consider the management port for purposes of generic routing


support of BGP full internet table depends from NPE-G2 processor memory size (1 GB) and cpu power not from chassis used

C7204VXR should be fine

Hope to help

Giuseppe

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