We've never pushed a NPE-G2 to 800Mb/s before but I would think they would topple over... hopefully someone on here could confirm my statement? Moving the BGP to the 12008's would be my choice with PRP-2 processors if the budget fits.... we're faced with a similar upgrade next year possibly moving BGP from a pair of 7606's (Sup720-3BXL) over to a pair of GSR's running PRP2 I think - the BGP processing etc. is pushing the CPU's too high on the 7600's.... Someone else might suggest the RSP720's but haven't had them in a production environment yet... we had PRP2's running on 12012 for a while and found them rock solid even with older line cards etc... Hope this helps a bit...;) Paul -----Original Message----- From: David Storandt [mailto:dstorandt@teljet.com] Sent: Friday, May 15, 2009 11:08 AM To: NANOG list Subject: NPE-G2 vs. Sup720-3BXL We're stuck in an engineering pickle, so some experience from this crew would be useful in tie-breaking... We operate a business-grade FTTx ISP with ~75 customers and 800Mbps of Internet traffic, currently using 6509/Sup2s for core routing and port aggregation. The MSFC2s are under stress from 3x full route feeds, pared down to 85% to fit the TCAM tables. One system has a FlexWAN with an OC3 card and it's crushing the CPU on the MSFC2. System tuning (stable IOS and esp. disabling SPD) helped a lot but still doesn't have the power to pull through. Hardware upgrades are needed... We need true full routes and more CPU horsepower for crunching BGP (+12 smaller peers + ISIS). OC3 interfaces are going to be mandatory, one each at two locations. Oh yeah, we're still a larger startup without endless pockets. Power, rack space, and SmartNet are not concerns at any location (on-site cold spares). We may need an upstream OC12 in the future but that's a ways out and not a concern here. Our engineering team has settled on three $20k/node options: - Sup720-3BXLs with PS and fan upgrades - Sup2s as switches + ISIS + statics and no BGP, push BGP edge routing off to NPE-G2s across a 2-3Gbps port-channel - Sup2s as switches + ISIS + statics and no BGP, push BGP edge routing off to a 12008 with E3 engines across a 2-3Gbps port-channel. Ideas and constructive opinions welcome, especially software and stability-related. Many thanks, -Dave ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and contains confidential and/or privileged material. If you received this in error, please contact the sender immediately and then destroy this transmission, including all attachments, without copying, distributing or disclosing same. Thank you."