not trying to defend the 7500 platform, it's obsolete all right. However, free is music to my ears.
What about longer term maintenance issues? Is the 7500 not scheduled for EOL from Cisco 'soon' ? So, purchasing 7500 bits that might be dropped by 'normal' Cisco support in 1 year versus purchasing some other hardware that will be in support longer might pay out in the longer term?
They recently refreshed the platform with RSP16, VIP8, and MX. It's still a viable platform for many medium size providers. I personally wouldn't use it for anything passing more than a couple hundred megs (at absolute most), but we have plenty of nodes like that. Actually, we've been seeing a trend where we are replacing 4700's with 7505/7's. -- Alex Rubenstein, AR97, K2AHR, alex@nac.net, latency, Al Reuben -- -- Net Access Corporation, 800-NET-ME-36, http://www.nac.net --