On Sun, Mar 13, 2011 at 1:27 PM, Christopher Morrow <morrowc.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
there's probably a different need in TOR and BO/SOHO locations than core devices, eh?
In today's backbone, this is certainly true. Feature-driven upgrades shouldn't be much of a factor for "P boxes" today, because modern networks have the option of simply label-switching in the core (just like 1990s networks could ATM/Frame-switch) without doing much of anything else. Feature-driven upgrades should be largely confined to "PE boxes." For the same reason, upgrading a P box should be easy, not hard. After all, it's just label-switching. In today's backbones, it should be more practical than ever to buy the most cost-effective box needed for now and the predictable near-term. Cost per gigabit continues to fall. Buying dramatically more capacity than is planned to be necessary sinks capital dollars into a box that does nothing but depreciate. I realize that organizationally-painful budgeting and purchasing processes often drive networks to buy the biggest thing available. Vendors understand this, too: they love to sell you a much bigger box than you need just because upgrading is hard to get approved so you don't want to do it any more frequently than necessary, even when that behavior is detrimental to cash-flow and bottom line. The more broken your organization, the more you need to spend extra money on "too big" boxes. Sounds pretty self-defeating, doesn't it? -- Jeff S Wheeler <jsw@inconcepts.biz> Sr Network Operator / Innovative Network Concepts