Need a WAN Ethernet WIC

[sarenner]

For our mid-size locations we need another Ethernet port on the router for the connection to the WAN provider. We need a design that is fully redundant (dual routers, dual WAN providers.) In the design we have come up with we have two routers (2811, 2821, 2851 depending on the number phones needed for SRST), two Layer 3 core switches (3750G) and the closets (3750's) are dual connected to the core. We have a P2P connection from each router to the core 3750G's and another P2P connection between the routers. This leaves NO Ethernet ports available to connect to the WAN provider when they hand us an Ethernet connection. We need the P2P links because the Core switches are running EIGRP Stub, and we need the direct connect between the routers because they are not running stub. I looked at connecting the routers to the core using a trunk where we have two P2P VLANs, but this does not work because if we loose a one of the core switches, the connection between the routers will go down as well. I have not found a NM, WIC or VWIC that has another ethernet port that we can use as a WAN connection providing a Layer 3 connection (along with QoS) to connect to our WAN providers. Whats an engineer to do?

[tdrais]

Is there some form of QoS limitation on the HWIC-4ESW that makes it so you cannot use it. Even though this is a switch and you therefore cannot assign ip's directly to the port it does support vlan interfaces.

This router also will support the nm-1e or nm-4e cards also if 10 meg is fast enough.

[sarenner]

I'm not sure what levels of QoS are supported on the 4ESW, but I do know that on the NM-16ESW QoS support is pretty basic and the 4ESW is of similar design. This would be used as a WAN port, so full support of QoS, rate limiting, queuing, WRED, etc, would be a must. These features are not fully supported on the 16ESW. The HWIC-1GE-SFP looks like it has all the features we need, but it does not do 10MB or 100MB and the it's too expensive (almost $4,000 list when you include the SFP). A better solution would be a HWIC with all the support of the HWIC-1GE, but with a 10/100 interface and priced at less than $1,000 list.

I haven't found any documentation that says the NM-1E and NM-4E are supported. They do not show up as a configurable option on the Dynamic configuration tool, not do they appear in the price list under the 2800 series. This would work if they are supported.

[tdrais]

I forgot the nm-4e is not supported. We upgraded a router from a 2600 to a 2800 and atempted to move the module and it didn't work.

I have the 4esw in many of my routers but I have only run simple packet marking on them. I guess I was lucky that I only tried to run more advanced QoS on the 2 main router ports. Thanks for the info. I will have to see what the restritctions are.

I don't know of any router that has more than 2 ethenet ports in this family. It is really strange that they support so many HWIC cards but they don't run nm-1fe cards. Guess they figured they wouldn't sell as many 3825's if you could run them in the 2800 routers.

[tdrais]

I applied this to a vlan interface on one of my hwic-4esw to see what wasn't supported. It took all this stuff.

I kept adding and nothing was rejected. It took both shaping and policing as well as parent child policys and matching using nbar.

#sh policy-map int vlan5

Vlan5

Service-policy output: out1

Class-map: one (match-all)

0 packets, 0 bytes

5 minute offered rate 0 bps, drop rate 0 bps

Match: protocol ftp

Traffic Shaping

Target/Average Byte Sustain Excess Interval Increment

Rate Limit bits/int bits/int (ms) (bytes)

30 (%) 0 (ms) 0 (ms)

30000000/30000000 187500 750000 750000 25 93750

Adapt Queue Packets Bytes Packets Bytes Shaping

Active Depth Delayed Delayed Active

- 0 0 0 0 0 no

Service-policy : in1

Class-map: onea (match-all)

0 packets, 0 bytes

5 minute offered rate 0 bps, drop rate 0 bps

Match: not dscp default

drop

Class-map: class-default (match-any)

0 packets, 0 bytes

5 minute offered rate 0 bps, drop rate 0 bps

Match: any

Queueing

Flow Based Fair Queueing

Maximum Number of Hashed Queues 256

(total queued/total drops/no-buffer drops) 0/0/0

exponential weight: 9

class Transmitted Random drop Tail drop Minimum Maximum Mark

pkts/bytes pkts/bytes pkts/bytes thresh thresh prob

0 0/0 0/0 0/0 20 40 1/10

1 0/0 0/0 0/0 22 40 1/10

2 0/0 0/0 0/0 24 40 1/10

3 0/0 0/0 0/0 26 40 1/10

4 0/0 0/0 0/0 28 40 1/10

5 0/0 0/0 0/0 30 40 1/10

6 0/0 0/0 0/0 32 40 1/10

7 0/0 0/0 0/0 34 40 1/10

rsvp 0/0 0/0 0/0 36 40 1/10

Class-map: two (match-all)

0 packets, 0 bytes

5 minute offered rate 0 bps, drop rate 0 bps

Match: dscp ef

Queueing

Strict Priority

Output Queue: Conversation 264

Bandwidth 100 (kbps) Burst 2500 (Bytes)

(pkts matched/bytes matched) 0/0

(total drops/bytes drops) 0/0

Class-map: three (match-all)

0 packets, 0 bytes

5 minute offered rate 0 bps, drop rate 0 bps

Match: ip rtp 2000 16383

police:

cir 10000 bps, bc 1500 bytes, be 1500 bytes

conformed 0 packets, 0 bytes; actions:

transmit

exceeded 0 packets, 0 bytes; actions:

transmit

violated 0 packets, 0 bytes; actions:

drop

conformed 0 bps, exceed 0 bps, violate 0 bps

Class-map: class-default (match-any)

0 packets, 0 bytes

5 minute offered rate 0 bps, drop rate 0 bps

Match: any

[sarenner]

Thanks for info!!! I will put this in our test lab and get a working config for our application.

Scott

[adgoandaga]

Hi, i'll appreciate your help for concrete information, such as specific examples, about when should i use a HWIC-1FE instead of a HWIC-4ESW (with different VLANs assigned to each port) to achieve an additional routed port.

For what i've found, using the latest IOS releases, there are practically no differences in the capabilities of a VLAN Interface (or a SVI) compared to an integrated layer 3 routed interface (true?); so, maybe the advantage of using a HWIC-1FE (3 times more expensive than the HWIC-4ESW) would be in performance when using stuff like rate limiting or Congestion avoidance... etc?.

Thank you very much.