IOS TFTP server scalability

[Fred Nielsen (ePlus)]

Considering using local IOS voice gateway routers as "load servers" to deliver firmware to IP phones to avoid latency delays at remote offices.

Does anyone know how many simultaneous TFTP download sessions an IOS router can support? Is there a fixed limit, or is it based on platform scalability. I can't find any documentation on the topic.

[paolo bevilacqua]

I think cisco has addressed scalability for phone FW upgrades via P2P feature, check it out.

[Fred Nielsen (ePlus)]

Aware of P2P (in fact considering combining P2P with the load server feature), but have not been able to find hard data on how this feature scales either.

For example, if I P2P enable a group of 2000 phones, and reset all simultaneously, how many phones will actually hit the TFTP server versus locate and participate in a P2P transfer hierarchy?

[Nicholas Matthews]

This would be dependent on the platform. This would be CPU-switched traffic capability, as the router would need to be involved in all of the requests.

Since this is the case, I would expect the amount of connections to be able to handle a good number of phones downloading TFTP firmware.

-nick