ASR1001 vs Catalyst 3850

[abbasali5]

I have two  Ethernet hand-off Internet circuits from two different ISP at two different locations.  

There are three locations connected internally, and  the bridge VLANs across all three locations.

The two ASR ISP routers (running IP services) are HSRP in two of these three locations.  

There are a few other switches in physically diverse locations for layer 2 connectivity and is low hanging fruit. 

The Primary ASR router also  act as a gateway for many of the internal networks.  We feel there are two many devices and since we don't need any fancy features such as iWAN, SD-WAN, DMVPN, I am thinking of going in with a single device instead of a switch and router for the Layer II ethernet hand-off circuits.

Will Catalyst 3850 be a good choice to eliminate ASRs since they are not providing anything else but Layer II circuits.  One of the issues I think would be taking full BGP routes from the ISPs?  Other than that I think 3850 would do the job nicely.

Any feedback will be appreciated.

Thanks,

[Joseph W. Doherty · Accepted solution]

If you don't need all "router" features, sure you can use a L3 switch (or perhaps a "metro" L3 switch).

However, be aware that WANs hand-offs often eventually lead to the need for more than what L3 switches support, especially those designed for LAN use.

As to a 3850, it was designed a "small" edge device, so I would be very careful selecting it for a Internet edge device. You would be hard put to load a full internet table into it.

Better choices might be a Catalyst 4500-X, 6840 or 9500.