Upgrade path from 7200's

johnelliot6 · ‎04-05-2010

Hi,

We have a bunch of 7200/G2's with 3560's as P/PE's(+LNS's - 3560's simply doing L2) - We take atm+eth tails from variety of upstreams, and throw them into vrf's for clients...majority of the G2's are running at 20-30%, so by no means struggling, but need some advice on an upgrade path.

The asr's look the logical choice?

And 4500's or 4900's for eth?(We are doing more and more co-lo eth hand-off's to clients, so port density(Or ability to increase easilty) is important

Thanks in advance.

Jon Marshall · ‎04-05-2010

johnelliot6 wrote:

Hi,

We have a bunch of 7200/G2's with 3560's as P/PE's(+LNS's - 3560's simply doing L2) - We take atm+eth tails from variety of upstreams, and throw them into vrf's for clients...majority of the G2's are running at 20-30%, so by no means struggling, but need some advice on an upgrade path.

The asr's look the logical choice?

And 4500's or 4900's for eth?(We are doing more and more co-lo eth hand-off's to clients, so port density(Or ability to increase easilty) is important

Thanks in advance.

John

I believe the ASR is indeed the logical upgrade path for the 7200s but i don't have much experience with the ASRs so perhaps someone else could comment.

Your switch upgrade. If port density is important then i would look at the 3750-E/4500/6500 solutions. If port density and throughput are needed then i would look at the 3750-E and the 6500. The 4500 even the 4500-E is too limiting in throughput.

From the above choices the 3750-E might be the way to go. There is very little difference between those switches and the 4900s to be honest, they are both pretty much wirespeed, but obviously with the 3750s you have the option to stack and the internal stack connection will be faster than simply chaining 4900s.

If throughput is not a concern though the 4500-E would meet your port density requirements very well and is very easy to upgrade port density ie. simply slot in a new module and away you go.

Edit - i assumed because you are using 3560s at present that the majority of connections are not fiber but copper. If they are fiber or you need more fiber density in future then this could lead you more to the 4500/6500 solution.

Jon

johnelliot6 · ‎04-05-2010

Thanks for the reply Jon.

R.E. The switches - Do the 3750's suffer from the same buffer inadequacies as the 3560's?(From what I have read they appear to?) Our traffic is quite "bursty", and we have found out the hard way that the buffers on the 3560 are simply inadequate to handle this, and we see large numbers of output drops.

The 4948 appears to not suffer from the buffer issues - How do these compare price-wise to the 4500's?

And yes, majority of connections are copper, with only a couple of fibre per switch.

Thanks again.