Dan Armstrong wrote: GSRs are useless if you are doing any kind of aggregation. Their traffic shaping abilities are embarrassing.
Neil J. McRae Historically yes, but no longer. The latest line of GSR cards now give them much greater capability in this area even though it was never designed as an access box.
There still is the issue of cost though. GSR line cards are not cheap.
7500 is the classic aggregator. They do the job quite well, actually. Based on cost right now, I would take 10 7500s over 1 7600 anyday.
If you are just aggregating E1/T1 then I'd agree, but the minute you need DS-3/E3/STM-1/ATM/100BaseT/ Gige aggregation then the 7600 is a far better choice cost wise
I would put 10mbps Ethernet and possibly DS3 in the same pool as E1/T1 though; this still remains in the realm of things a 7500 does fine. I'm not trying to defend the 7500 platform, it's obsolete all right. However, free is music to my ears. Michel.