On Fri, 10 Jul 2009, Mark Radabaugh wrote:
I'm looking for new core routers for a small ISP and having a hard time finding something appropriate and reasonably priced. We don't have huge traffic levels (<1Gb) and are mostly running Ethernet interfaces to upstreams rather than legacy interfaces (when did OC3 become legacy?). Lot's of choices for routers that can handle the existing BGP tables - but not so much in small platforms (1-10Gb traffic) if you assume that IPv6 is going to explode the routing table in the next 5 years. The manufacturers still seem to think low traffic routers don't need much memory or CPU. What projections are you using regarding the default free zone over the next 5 years when picking new hardware?
1-10Gb is what you consider a small ISP platform? At the low end (maybe much too low for you), the top models in cisco's 2800 series can hold 1GB of RAM. That ought to be plenty for the next few years. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Lewis | I route Senior Network Engineer | therefore you are Atlantic Net | _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________