Metro E Interface Questions

[DavidCiciora]

Hi, I have a few questions about design of a new metro e connection.

We have one 3800 Router at the main office that will be recieving a 100 mb metro e connection.

From the main office we will have 10 mb metro e connections to three other sites that have Cisco 3700 routers.

My question is...

What interface modules do I need to put into these routers to make use of the metro e connections?

[YANGCCIE4]

Hi, David,

I am not sure if you have other requirements, such as voice function, if only the bandwidth is the only issue, you can choose the 10-100Mbps interface module for each 3700, right ?

regards,

[Leo Laohoo]

3725 is can't support more than 56 mb but the 3745 can go above 100 mb.

http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/downloads/765/tools/quickreference/routerperformance.pdf

During it's time, the 3700 series are quiet "versatile". It depends entirely on how the Metro E is presented to you, the 3700 can support fibre optic (using the NM-1GE) or copper (aside from the two ports, you can purchase the NM-1FE or NM-2FE).

[pnicolette]

Best thing about metro E is that it acts like plain old E, so an L3 switch can patch to it with cost/performance advantages over a router. We miss netflow, but there's always port monitoring and WireShark.

That said, with a max total throughput of 30 Mb on the 100 link, your routers will do just fine. Our carrier uses copper interfaces for 10 and 100 metro E, and MM fiber for 1000. Someday when you want to nudge your remotes up to 100 each, think about L3 switches.....

[DavidCiciora]

Thank you all for the information. It explained it perfectly for me.

[Leo Laohoo]

Thanks for the rating.